Auretale

Virtual Thread (synchronized with the Real Thread.)

Bow in hand, I held the highest point of the building. CBGs kept pouring in from every side. I’d barely loosed a few arrows before they broke through.

I switched back to my long saber and met them in a last, brutal close-quarters fight. At first the numbers were manageable. I could barely keep up.

Then, after I cut down dozens, more and more CBGs climbed onto the rooftop.

They didn’t fear death. They didn’t care about hitting their own. Every time I dropped one, another stepped over the body and rushed me. The space around me shrank until it felt like the air itself was trying to crush me.

I was seconds from being swallowed.

In reality, that was the exact moment I was preparing to trigger the electromagnetic pulse.

And then—something I never expected.

The swarm’s attack slowed.

The savage grins on their faces stiffened, then dulled.

Within moments they were all standing in place, staring upward.

I looked up too.

The violet fog that had been smothering the sky was rapidly thinning. Phantom Forge’s grip on the world was weakening…

The connection kept fading—until it snapped.

Control rushed back into my hands like breath into a drowning chest.

The reversal was so sudden that I froze right alongside the CBGs. It took me a beat to remember what to do.

I shot up into the air, looked down at the ground packed with CBGs, and drew an X with my hand.

Most of them vanished at once—deleted.

The rest reverted to what they’d been: ordinary citizens. In an instant the city became empty.

I kept flying until I rose out of the “island.” The lightning-like network lacing between the memory fragments was gone.

A quick search later, I pinpointed the nanobots’ location.

I went straight for it…

***

Real Thread (continuing from the Virtual Thread.)

Phantom Forge went offline.

It went offline at the worst possible moment.

Miller? Did he do it?

How was that even possible? The Genesis was basically a moving communications base station. And I could still see the light-specks it was dropping through the escape corridor.

At the same time, I heard the shriek of lasers cutting the air—and the nonstop rhythm of explosions.

There was a battle raging outside.

What was happening?

Before I could make sense of it, the Invaders inside the island panicked. Some scuttled toward the escape corridor. Others charged straight at me.

I didn’t trust myself to wipe them all out, but I could keep myself alive.

I dropped the rocket launcher, drew my laser gun, and started picking the mechanical scorpions off one by one.

The ones coming for me went down fast. The rest vanished into the ship.

The explosions outside never stopped. I kept worrying that Phantom Forge’s disconnect was temporary.

Only when my self in the Virtual Thread finally destroyed the nanobots did I truly relax. I withdrew from the Virtual Thread completely and forced myself to think.

If Phantom Forge was offline, then wasn’t the Hope also effectively offline?

And the ship wasn’t far from Peyton City…

That thought hit like a spark.

I shoved Dorian-2 aside, took its position, and jacked into the ship’s control system.

Sure enough, the ship was in “unmanned” mode—and it had only been off our planned course for six minutes.

Which meant my original plan still had a chance.

I felt a rush of relief and immediately began turning the ship around.

The Prism-Etched Scepter’s permissions proved just how brutally efficient they were. Commands that normally required step-by-step confirmations could skip the whole chain and go straight to the systems that needed to execute.

It cut the workload down to something even I could handle. I’d never piloted a ship this large before—and yet it felt simple.

The Hope slid back onto its original route and started for Peyton City again. I pushed the speed to maximum and brought the radar online.

I needed to know what was going on out there.

For some reason, the radar pings found nothing except Phantom Forge’s Genesis and its escorts.

But I could see Phantom Forge firing constantly—hammering “empty air” like it was fighting something invisible.

Was its opponent cloaked?

“Collision in ten minutes. Immediate emergency measures required…”

The ship’s emergency broadcast kicked back on.

The moment the Genesis saw me turning, it abandoned its unseen opponent and came after me. All of its firepower swung onto the Hope.

The battered hull took wave after wave of impacts. Fire flared again across the ship. The island shuddered hard enough to rattle my vision.

I couldn’t help wondering if this broken giant could survive long enough to reach the city.

The Genesis climbed directly above the island.

The system flagged a massive energy spike.

I knew what was coming.

But I had no weapons capable of stopping it. All I could do was force the ship into an emergency lateral drift.

The Hope was too huge.

When the violet pillar came down, we didn’t even clear half a ship-length.

The island convulsed. I nearly got thrown off my feet.

Outside the glass wall, the armor plating—the kind even missiles couldn’t crack—held for three seconds before it tore open. The curved glass wall exploded into fragments.

The beam punched inside, striking less than ten meters in front of me, and began sliding toward my position…

Heat washed over me. I jumped aside—

And then, abruptly, the beam died.

Through the shattered glass, I saw the Genesis tumble sideways like a spinning top slapped by a whip.

And behind it, I finally saw what it had been fighting.

A massive disc-shaped craft.

Or… a massive Luofu.

Even now I couldn’t tell whether it was a ship or a living thing. It was nearly the size of the Hope. Its translucent body would have been almost invisible against the night sky—if not for the many glowing orbs flowing within it.

It was badly wounded. Its body was perforated by burning holes.

But it kept chasing the Genesis, whipping those absurdly long tentacles and flinging its light-orbs like ammunition.

The Genesis had no choice. It stopped attacking the Hope and focused on the Luofu.

So it really was Miller.

He’d saved me again.

I exhaled—and then my eyes dropped, and I realized a new problem was already on its way.

That “Genesis beam” hadn’t destroyed the island, but it burned straight through the first-floor deck, leaving a huge hole.

It had just opened a door for Phantom Forge’s ground forces.

Sure enough, movement started to stir below.

I found cover by the second-floor railing, aimed my laser gun down at the hole, and suddenly remembered the two lizardmen stationed below.

I shouted for them to help, but whatever they’d run into, they never answered.

Robots began climbing up through the opening.

I fired in quick bursts and sent them tumbling back down.

From above, I kept shooting into the hole. The enemy shot back.

With Phantom Forge offline, those robots moved like idiots. No tactics. No cover. They just kept charging upward.

With nothing but a laser gun, I managed to hold the line.

…

“Collision in three minutes. Outcome irreversible. All personnel must evacuate immediately… BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—!”

The alarm screamed.

I glanced back to the central island console—and froze.

A notification blinked: one unread message.

I opened it and went completely still.

Sent four minutes ago. A single line:

“Get up here. Miller is waiting for Iron Man.”

After Miller left, disaster had piled on disaster. I’d stopped allowing myself to hope.

Seeing that message reminded me of our promise.

But four minutes, in the current situation, was an eternity.

Was he still there?

I decided to find out. If there was even a chance to live, I wasn’t going to refuse it.

I slid my 2D blade and laser gun away, then tossed my last two grenades down into the hole on the first floor and sprinted for the escape corridor.

The moment I grabbed the ladder inside the corridor, something fell from above.

I jumped back.

It slammed down at my feet.

It was half a body.

More precisely—the lower half of a Firecaller.

I realized, all at once: where was the upper half? It had landed here too, earlier.

Now it was gone.

No time. I needed to climb.

I looked up. The path above was clear.

But as I reached for the ladder again, a voice behind me barked a phrase I knew far too well.

“Plando will prevail!”

I spun.

The severed Firecaller was still alive. It propped itself up with one hand.

In the other, it held the rocket launcher I’d abandoned.

The barrel was already aimed at me.

I drew my gun as fast as I could—

Too late.

It pulled the trigger.

For one surreal moment, time slowed.

I watched the EMP warhead spin toward me, blue arcs crawling over its surface.

I dodged on instinct.

The warhead struck the airlock behind me and detonated.

Blue light flooded my vision—bright as the most vivid sky in any dream—

Then came black.

A sudden plunge into a bottomless abyss.

And after that…

I knew nothing.

(End of Volume Three.)

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (I)

June 11, 1863

A twin-hulled fishing boat cut across an endless ocean.

The vessel was new—luxurious, precise, almost too clean to be real. It was 37.2 meters long and 13.6 meters wide. Between the two hulls it carried a miniature two-person submersible. There was a pool, a gym, a holographic theater—everything you’d expect on a yacht.

“This is a yacht.”

That was what the workers at the North Sende Shipyard all agreed when they built it.

But the client insisted on adding a totally out-of-place trawl winch and hoist at the stern. He insisted, loudly, that this was a fishing boat—and he named it…

the Serenity.

The Serenity could comfortably carry ten people.

Right now, it carried only three—unless you didn’t count the robot.

If you didn’t, then there were only two:

Grote Ovahog and Merc Ovahog.

Grote was nearly seventy. A real fisherman. Skin dark from decades of sun. Hands rough as rope. Hair and beard in wild disorder. Clothes rumpled. Eyes always half-lidded with drink.

No one who saw him would ever guess he owned a luxury “yacht.”

His son, Merc Ovahog, was a vegetable.

He spent every day slumped in a wheelchair. His body was stitched from head to toe, scar lines crossing him like seams. His stare was empty. All he could do was look out at the sea.

YASAR-C011 was a general-purpose humanoid robot. It handled everything: piloting, cooking, daily upkeep, and caring for Merc.

The first time it ever saw Merc, he was already like this.

But Yasa—because that was the name Grote used—still knew its master well.

For over half a year, it had lived on nothing but Grote’s stories about Merc.

Grote drank.

And when he wasn’t drinking, he talked to Merc about their past.

“Merc is a genius, Yasa—YASAR-C011—and I’m a useless sack of nothing. He shouldn’t have been born an Ovahog. He sure as hell shouldn’t have ended up like this. If he’d been born into a powerful family, he’d be someone who mattered.”

When Grote got drunk, he talked about Merc the same way, every time.

He didn’t care whether his audience was a bottle, the sea, or a robot. He’d cry through the same lines until he passed out.

Yasa had been delivered to the ship the moment it left the factory. It didn’t understand all the subtleties of human life, but it understood this much:

the Serenity’s owner was not living serenely.

He was living in pain.

On the wall of Merc’s cabin hung a photograph.

Merc in uniform—broad-shouldered, bright-eyed, handsome.

But he’d never even made it to service. According to Grote, Merc had passed every physical and every test with perfect marks. The military had called him like they’d found treasure and told him to report in a week.

Somewhere inside that single week, everything went wrong.

The Merc in the photo looked nothing like the withered figure in the wheelchair. When Yasa lifted him into bed, he felt lighter than a sack of leaves.

Grote believed that one day Merc would miraculously regain consciousness.

Every doctor who’d examined Merc said otherwise.

Yasa agreed with the doctors. The one time it said so aloud, Grote punched it—and Yasa never contradicted him again.

Yasa also knew parts of Grote’s life.

Grote hadn’t been a good man in his earlier years. He’d been to prison. He drank and gambled.

When Merc was five, Grote was buried in debt. He even gambled away their only asset: the fishing boat.

Merc’s mother finally broke. One night, she left without a word.

After she left, Grote and Merc survived on relief money.

It wasn’t enough—even to keep Grote drunk. He neglected Merc completely and dragged them through a year of misery.

One day, with liquor in his blood, Grote told his son they were too poor. He said he planned to send Merc to an orphanage.

The next morning, little Merc was gone.

Grote searched everywhere.

Around noon, Merc came back—and handed Grote a small wad of money.

Merc asked, “We’ve money now? Does that mean you won’t send me away?”

Grote demanded to know where it came from. Merc said he’d earned it doing business.

Grote laughed. Obviously the kid had stolen it. Grote had done the same kind of thing as a child—and told better lies.

“Looks like your ‘business’ isn’t very good.”

He tossed the words and went out to drink again.

He came back near dawn.

Merc was gone again.

Grote didn’t even bother looking. He slept until noon.

Merc returned right on cue—with twice as much money as the day before.

“Better today,” Merc said.

That finally made Grote curious. He asked again.

Same answer: business.

On the fourth day, Merc got up before sunrise, strapped on a headlamp, and went out.

This time Grote followed in secret.

Merc carried a big sack straight to the beach and started picking up shells.

People did gather seafood at low tide. But not kids that young, and not that early.

The tide had just pulled back. The beach was carpeted with shellfish. By the time daylight arrived and other people showed up, Merc had already filled the whole sack.

When it couldn’t hold any more, he dragged the bag—heavier than he was—into the street, opened it beside a busy road, and started selling.

He really was doing business.

Grote stood there, stunned.

He went home in a daze, sat on the front steps, and stared into the wreckage of his own life.

Merc was back before noon.

As always, he placed the money in front of Grote.

“Why are you doing this?” Grote asked—using the tone he normally reserved for adults.

“For no reason,” Merc mumbled. “I lost Mom. I don’t want to lose Dad too.”

Grote didn’t answer.

For the first time, he hugged his son.

After that day, Grote never touched alcohol again.

And on Slumberport’s cold, quiet beach before dawn, people began to see a father and son moving together through the dark…

Half a year later, with a little money saved, Grote rented a fishing boat and returned to sea.

And strangely enough—whenever Grote went out with Merc on board, he always came back full.

Grote became a different man. Every day he was energized, confident, alive.

In less than two years, he paid off his debts.

By the time Merc turned nine, Grote owned his own fishing boat again. To keep the luck close, he named it the Merc.

During those years, Grote taught his son to dive. Merc fell in love with it immediately.

Even without any gear, he could dive down thirty meters.

Merc also turned diving into a new kind of “shell business.” While other kids wrestled in parks, Merc explored the shallow seafloor alone, turning up rare shells that sold for real money.

Grote was speechless. He’d been a fisherman his whole life—he knew what those things were worth. Professional collectors could search for months and find nothing.

Merc found them like it was easy.

Every time Merc brought up another “treasure” from the seabed, Grote showered him with praise.

“Merc, you’re lucky as a god. Sweet hell—how are you my son? I still can’t believe it.”

Once Grote stopped worrying about money, he finally thought about Merc’s schooling. He didn’t want his brilliant son trapped as a fisherman forever.

So he moved them from Slumberport to Everwinter City and poured everything he had into finding Merc a good school.

Everwinter City sat on an artificial floating island.

To keep a mild sun shining on it year-round, the city traveled back and forth between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

Thanks to its stable climate, many of the Tower Clan’s top universities and research institutes were concentrated there.

Merc enrolled at nine. He left Everwinter City at twenty.

His grades were ordinary.

But almost everyone in the city knew his name.

Starting at twelve, he won Everwinter’s annual diving championship every year.

At sixteen, he even represented the Tower Clan in a diving competition held against Plando—and took first place.

It was the only championship the Tower Clan ever won against Plando.

That same year, Merc discovered shooting. It became another obsession—one that fit his strange talent perfectly.

At seventeen, he won Everwinter’s shooting championship too.

At eighteen, he won the national title.

At nineteen, he improved a seawater oxygen extractor, cutting the size and weight of single-diver gear by almost half.

The patent made him a fortune.

The string of achievements left Grote dizzy. He started drinking again—just to cope with the awe. When he praised Merc, his words stopped having any brakes.

“Merc, you’re a damn god walking the earth. By heaven above, I’m not even worthy to be your grandson.”

At twenty, invitations from top universities and research organizations nearly broke his inbox.

And then Merc made a choice no one expected.

He decided to go back to Grote’s boat.

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (II)

“My dear son—why would you choose that?” Grote couldn’t understand Merc’s decision at all.

“For no reason, Dad,” Merc said. “I just like the sea.”

“Ninety-five percent of this planet is ocean. There are more uninhabited islands than anyone can count. There’s so much worth exploring. I want to see it.”

…

During the years Merc was in school, Grote still went out to sea now and then. It quickly became obvious that the Merc wasn’t what brought him luck.

Merc was.

After Merc returned to the boat, they started coming back loaded again and again. Grote found it unbelievable. Merc insisted it wasn’t luck at all and tried to explain ocean currents, monsoons, breeding cycles…

Grote didn’t understand a word.

So he let his son call every shot.

In his free time, Merc still dove constantly. With his improved oxygen extractor, he could stay under long enough to reach places most people never even knew existed.

He filmed hidden underwater landscapes and discovered several marine species no one had ever recorded.

Two years later, preserved sea specimens filled his cabin wall to wall.

Even out on the open ocean, Merc never abandoned his other hobby: shooting.

Whether they were rocking on the deck, standing on an untouched island, or deep under the water—whether the target was a bubble spat by a rock eel, a barnacle climbing a reef, or a vicious kunpeng fish in the sea—Merc always found something worth aiming at.

With reverence, Grote told Yasa that Merc’s skill kept sharpening. He could even hit a rainbow speargun fish as it leapt from the water in rough wind and heavy waves.

He seemed like an all-knowing, all-capable god.

Before long, they’d circled the entire coastline.

They never went far offshore, though. Their boat was too small, and the catch had to get back to port quickly.

Grote saw the hunger in Merc’s eyes—the way his gaze kept slipping to the horizon.

He told his son, “We’ve got enough money to trade up to a bigger boat… if you want.”

Merc nodded.

But after a single night, he changed his mind.

“No, Dad. Not yet. If we’re upgrading, we upgrade to the best. You deserve to enjoy life too.”

He leaned forward, eyes bright.

“Let’s go to the far sea. I’ll make a lot of money.”

“How?” Grote asked, intrigued.

“We’ll catch sea-ink lizards. I saw a notice last night—the Marine Biology Institute is paying a fortune for live ones.”

“That’s impossible,” Grote said flatly. “No fishing boat can catch a live sea-ink lizard.”

Sea-ink lizards lived in cold waters. They were extremely intelligent and kept far away from fishing vessels. Worse, most of their territory lay within Plando’s waters—making them even harder to reach.

They also had a miraculous healing ability. Cut one into pieces and it could recover.

Some research even suggested sea-ink lizards might be immortal. One authority once claimed that if humans had never come to Lansen Planet, then in a few tens of thousands of years, sea-ink lizards might have evolved into a sapient species.

Plando had been studying them for a long time, developing anti-aging drugs and limb-regeneration techniques from that research.

To study the creature themselves, the Tower Clan’s institutes offered two million Towercoins for each live specimen.

“I can,” Merc said calmly. “I think I can catch one alive.”

If anyone else had said that, Grote would have laughed in their face.

But when his son said it, Grote believed him instantly.

“As you say, Captain Merc,” Grote said, snapping a salute.

They acted immediately.

They returned to Everwinter City. Merc spent days selecting the best sniper rifle he could find and commissioning a custom set of “fishing” tools.

Once everything was ready, the two of them sailed to the Tower Clan’s southernmost city—Coldstill Port—loaded up on supplies, and headed south.

A week later, the Merc crossed the 60°S line and entered the disputed Antarctic waters.

Grote had been loud and fearless before they left. Out there, he couldn’t hide his nerves. Rumors said that if they ran into Plando patrol drones, they’d be sunk on sight.

And the Southern Ocean’s weather was even more dangerous. Even in summer, a calm sea could freeze into an ice field overnight.

But Merc was luck made flesh.

They spent twenty-seven days in Antarctic waters without incident—and successfully caught two sea-ink lizards.

“How did you actually catch them?” Yasa asked, unable to hide its curiosity.

Grote, reliving it, became animated:

“The Merc sailed for days. We passed a few deserted islands. The floes kept getting thicker—some of them were damn huge. It felt like we were sailing off the edge of the world. I’d bet Slumberport has never seen a fishing boat come that far.”

“Nobody can copy Merc’s hunting method,” he went on. “Sea-ink lizards like to ambush sea-spine mice when they’re sunning themselves on the ice. Merc said that split-second is the only window you ever get.”

“My smart kid caught a few sea mice, sedated them, and left them on an ice floe as bait. Then he put on all-white clothes and lay flat on another floe a full nautical mile away.”

“I piloted the boat and hid even farther out.”

“Merc lay on that ice like a professional sniper. Hours. Not moving. Then the instant a sea-ink lizard leapt onto the floe, he fired and delivered the sedative he’d mixed himself.”

“If he’d been half a second slower, it would’ve dragged its prey back into the sea and vanished forever.”

“It’s hard enough just to hit it,” Grote emphasized. “And even if you hit it, you still might not catch it.”

“Why?” Yasa asked.

“Sea-ink lizards are weird,” Grote said. “They heal like nothing you’ve ever seen. If you don’t get to them within five minutes, they recover and disappear.”

“Then what do you do?” Yasa asked again.

“The moment he hits one, he calls me on the radio. I jump on a powered surfboard and race over. I wrap it with a special net while I’m on top of it, and at the same time I slam the boat over at full speed.”

“If all of that happens within five minutes, you’ve got a chance.”

“Sounds hard.”

“You’re telling me. I’d never heard of fishing like that in my life. Only he could think of it—and pull it off.”

Grote sank deeper into the memory.

“Honestly, we could’ve caught three. The first one—near Gaben Island—was the biggest, two meters long…”

His voice dropped.

“I was too far out. By the time I reached them, the monster had already woken up. It dragged the net down toward the seabed like its life depended on it. Merc’s foot was caught in the mesh. It dragged him too. He almost—”

Grote took a long drink.

“Listen, brother Yasa. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Understood,” Yasa said. “Encrypting data.”

“But… we found a huge secret,” Grote whispered, lowering his voice as if someone might overhear.

***

One year earlier…

“Merc—Merc!”

Grote leaned over the rail, eyes locked on the sea, roaring into the radio.

No response.

“Damn it.”

He ripped off his headset, rushed into the cabin, grabbed a set of diving gear, and started strapping in.

And then Merc’s voice broke the surface.

“Dad—! cough cough!”

Merc surfaced, pale from holding his breath too long.

“Thank god—you finally came up!” Grote exhaled hard and dropped the ladder.

Merc hauled himself onto the deck—and immediately started putting on the dive gear Grote had brought.

“Oh hell, what are you doing?” Grote blurted, terrified. “You can’t catch it in the water!”

“Not that, Dad. There’s something huge down there. I need to go look again.”

“What is it?”

“I think it’s a wreck.”

“A wreck?!” Grote jolted. “There aren’t any shipping lanes here. Is the rumor true? Did a fishing boat get sunk?”

“No—not a surface ship,” Merc said.

“It’s a starship. And it looks like a warship.”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (III)

“Under the sea? A warship?” Grote wondered if he’d misheard.

“I think so. It’s too dark down there to see the whole thing, but I can make out the outline of a turret.”

“Sweet hell…” Grote licked his lips. “I… I’ll go with you.”

“No, Dad. The water’s deep and freezing. You need to stay up here—you’re the one who can support me.”

Grote hesitated, then nodded.

“Fine. But be careful.”

Merc finished gearing up and jumped into the sea.

At five meters, he ran the standard checks—one by one—confirmed everything was working, and descended.

Through the camera mounted on Merc’s helmet, Grote could clearly see the underwater scene on the captain’s cabin display.

The sea was astonishingly clear. With the bright light, visibility stretched far.

As Merc went deeper, a colossal silhouette slowly emerged.

“God… it’s at least six hundred meters long,” Grote breathed.

“Even its turret is bigger than our boat,” Merc said, pointing to the massive gun mount on the ship’s back.

They weren’t far from Gaben Island. The water wasn’t especially deep, but it was brutally cold. Even with heated gear, Merc could feel it biting through him.

He reached 320 meters—exactly the wreck’s depth.

He slipped between two cannon barrels thicker than his waist and swam toward the ship’s side.

Sparse algae and simple cnidarians clung to the hull, but in polar waters there wasn’t much growth.

Merc circled the ship, taking in details, but he couldn’t find a nameplate or hull number.

“From the design, it’s probably a Plando ship,” Grote said.

“Yeah,” Merc replied. “It looks like an early model from Plando’s space fleet. It’s probably been here a long time.”

“But military ships have names and numbers. Why doesn’t this one?”

“Maybe they’re covered by algae?”

Merc kept moving along the hull.

Not far ahead, a protruding cylindrical structure came into view—the docking module.

The outer hatch was actually open. Through a short passage, he could see an inner door leading deeper into the ship.

Merc swam inside.

By headlamp, the docking module looked intact. A few spacesuits hung on the wall.

But the suits had no markings either—another bad sign.

His attention landed on a control panel beside the inner hatch.

He pressed a few buttons casually.

And then the dim ceiling lights in the docking module snapped on.

A soft, grinding click followed.

Merc turned—

and horror crawled up his spine.

The outer hatch, silent for who knew how many years, was closing.

“Get out!” Grote yelled. “NOW!”

Merc kicked hard, trying to swim through—

but the hatch shut faster.

It sealed him inside the docking module.

“What do we do?!” Grote panicked.

“I didn’t think the ship still had power,” Merc said, breath quickening.

But the module was lit, and years of deep-sea exploration had given him a nerve most people didn’t have.

He forced himself to calm down.

“Don’t panic,” Grote said, voice tight. “Control your breathing. The water in there can still be electrolyzed into oxygen for at least an hour. I’ll come down and see if I can pry it open—”

Before he could finish, another sound rolled through the metal—like turbines turning.

Then the seawater inside the docking module began to drain away.

“Wha—what now?”

“I get it!” Merc shouted. “I must’ve hit the docking switch. The ship thinks I’m a docking astronaut. Don’t worry, Dad. Once I run the exit procedure, I can get out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. Don’t forget—I took interstellar navigation electives in school. I even spent two months in space.”

“I didn’t forget. But this isn’t space.”

“I know the sea better,” Merc said.

…

While they talked, the last of the water drained away.

Jets of mist hissed from the ceiling and walls—sterilizing gas.

Merc became even more confident in his guess.

When the mist dispersed, he lifted his dive mask and took a cautious breath.

The air reeked of disinfectant, sharp enough to sting.

But it was breathable.

Then the inner door opened.

Merc instinctively pressed himself to the side and stared into the doorway—

and saw only darkness.

The docking module’s light didn’t reach far before it dissolved into ink.

His nerves tightened again. He listened hard, trying to catch any sound from the dark.

Silence.

Only occasional water droplets ticking against metal.

Merc stepped forward—

and suddenly, the corridor lit up.

Lights ignited one after another, revealing a wide passage stretching ahead.

“Don’t go in, Merc,” Grote warned, voice low. “Come back. Right now.”

“Dad…” Merc licked his lips, staring at the corridor’s far end. “I want to take a look.”

“This isn’t normal diving. This ship is… wrong.”

“I’ll be careful. If anything feels off, I’m coming straight out.”

Against Grote’s repeated warnings, Merc moved forward, cautious and slow.

He was nervous, despite himself. Every few steps, he stopped and listened.

The corridor gave him nothing but quiet.

After a bend, a row of cabin doors appeared along one side.

Merc stopped at the first.

Through the small window, he saw a compact room that looked like a medical bay: a bed against the wall, equipment on the opposite side.

But something was off.

The bed was sealed behind thick glass—like a cell.

Was it to keep patients from escaping?

He kept going, peering into each room.

The layouts were all similar. He tested the doors—locked, unmoving.

At the fifth door, he found it had been damaged.

He squeezed through the warped frame.

This room was different. The glass wall was shattered. The bed had been knocked over. Shards glittered across the floor, and among them—

dark, dried blood.

He found nothing else.

Back in the corridor, he could see the far end clearly now.

Near it, something lay on the floor in a heap.

Merc approached and realized it was a corpse face-down, wearing a white uniform.

On its back was a symbol: a tree formed from biomolecular icons.

Merc recognized that emblem.

Tannovi Bioengineering—a famous Plando biotech corporation with centuries of history, known for drugs and medical equipment. Even in the Tower Clan, it was a household name.

Why would Tannovi personnel be on a warship?

The body was long dried out. One hand held a shattered glass tube. The other still gripped a pistol.

A bullet wound had punched through its back. It had been shot.

“I told you there was… M—Merc… don’t… don’t go… turn back…”

Grote’s voice came through in broken fragments. The signal was fading in and out.

“Got it, Dad.” Merc spoke into his helmet mic. “I’m leaving now.”

He meant it.

But the corridor had ended.

At the very end, a heavy blast door should’ve been there—

instead, it had been blown open. Bullet holes scarred the surrounding wall.

Whatever happened on this ship, there had been a firefight.

Was that why it went down?

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (IV)

Merc took the pistol from the dried corpse and leaned in to look.

Beyond the opening was a circular hall—more like a massive lab.

Unknown machines filled the space. The whole place was a wreck: bullet impacts everywhere, scorch marks, structural damage.

Inside the hall he saw more corpses.

Some were charred to coal. Some were torn apart. One had a hole blasted clean through its chest.

The floor was stained with dried black blood and littered with spent casings.

Merc didn’t find anything valuable.

But his heartbeat kept accelerating.

Several doors in the hall led deeper into unknown sections. All of them were locked.

There was no lighting beyond them, but through the glass and his helmet light he could still make out pieces of what lay inside.

The first door looked like storage. Rows of refrigeration cabinets held glass vials—identical to the broken one the corpse had carried.

These were intact, filled with a fluorescent yellow liquid.

The second door looked like a specimen room. Glass containers lined the walls, holding preserved creatures: bat-dragons, spiny rats, rhino-horn tigers…

Merc even saw a sea-ink lizard.

The species ranged wildly—but they were all apex predators.

At the third door, a dried corpse lay at the threshold. Its posture suggested it had been bracing the door with everything it had.

It must have been terrified. Even in death, its face was twisted in panic.

Now that blackened, distorted expression was… worse than terror.

It was grotesque.

Blood smeared the door. Blood smeared the floor inside. Farther in, shadowy lumps rose and fell—more bodies, maybe. Between the grime on the glass and the distance, Merc couldn’t make out details.

His mental tolerance was reaching its limit.

He decided to leave.

He followed the wall-walkway, aiming to circle back to the hall’s entrance—

and then he noticed an open door.

The only open door in the entire hall.

He stopped and looked inside.

An office.

A desk at the center. Behind it sat another dried corpse.

The head was missing half of its skull. It wore a researcher’s uniform too.

And the office itself—wide, luxurious—suggested whoever died here had been important.

Merc stepped closer and read the nameplate on the uniform.

Zachary Lane.

Merc kicked something on the floor.

He looked down.

A pistol.

And a small book, palm-sized.

He picked up the book and flipped through it.

A handwritten journal—rare.

Every page was packed with writing, but more than half the pages were stuck together by dried blood.

Merc shoved it into his suit and was about to leave when his eyes swept under the desk—

and landed on a holographic computer.

Its indicator lights were still blinking.

Meaning: it was still running.

Merc swallowed hard, forced down his fear, and pressed the power control.

The projector flickered. A spherical cluster of light formed above the desk.

Inside it, dozens upon dozens of smaller light-orbs floated in neat rows.

Each orb was a video file.

And every single one was playing.

There were 1,752 files.

Some orbs were marked in red—important.

Merc tapped a red orb twice.

It expanded to fill the cluster and shaped itself into a middle-aged man in a lab uniform.

The environment behind him was this very hall.

Because of unstable power, the hologram was dim and jittery.

The man looked out at Merc and said:

“My name is Dr. Zachary Lane. The time is 9:30 a.m., May 12, 1850. Today is a day worth remembering. Four hundred years ago today, Mr. Tannovi founded this great company. And today, our ‘Palette Box’ program has made important progress.”

Lane stepped aside, revealing a young man in a wheelchair.

The man’s upper body was hugely muscular.

But his legs were as thin as ordinary arms—too weak to hold him standing.

And yet he was smiling.

Excited, even.

From off-camera, Lane narrated:

“Subject 632 had his diseased legs amputated at 2:10 a.m., then received experimental agent HN-67. Twenty minutes later we discontinued anticoagulants and left the wound exposed—”

A set of split-screen clips appeared, showing different stages.

“No bleeding. No rejection response. One hour after HN-67 injection, cells near the wound began proliferating. Full regrowth completed at 6:34…”

The video rolled into long stretches of inspection data. Merc couldn’t understand any of it.

He swiped to the next file—

and accidentally hit sequential playback.

Lane appeared again. This time his excitement was almost spilling out of his skin.

“Today is May 22. Twenty days since Subject 632. We’ve injected HN-67 into seventeen more subjects. Not a single failure. Limbs, facial features, organs—even a subject missing part of the frontal lobe—all returned to normal…”

Multiple split-screen clips bloomed around him.

“…It’s exhilarating. We did it. Human subjects don’t regenerate as fast as sea-ink lizards, but for the entire Palette Box program, this is a leap. For civilian medicine, it’s revolutionary.”

“The whole team is ecstatic. This is the greatest achievement of the century. If the Covert weren’t under information silence, we’d have sent this back to headquarters already…”

…

“Dad, are you seeing this?” Merc said quietly. “I think we found something huge.”

“Dad…?”

No answer.

Only then did Merc notice that at some point, the signal had cut out completely…

***

(Now…)

“The deeper Merc went into that ship, the weaker the signal got. In the end, the feed froze on some terrifying dried-out face. I figured that would scare him. He should’ve been scared! Any normal person would be scared, right? But no!”

Grote sat on the deck with one arm around the railing and an empty bottle clenched in the other, talking nonstop. Spit sprayed all over Yasa’s face.

“I started freaking out. What was he going to run into on that damn ship? Ghosts? Monsters? Aliens? Whatever it was, we were finished. Yasa—out there, we were miles from the nearest inhabited island. Even if we screamed for help, nobody could get to us. I dug out another set of dive gear, ready to go down after him…”

Grote’s eyes narrowed as he remembered. A grin tugged at his mouth.

“But just as I finished gearing up, he popped back up. Not a hair missing. He ripped off his helmet and yelled at me—”

He mimicked Merc’s voice, shouting:

“Dad! We’re going to be rich! I found something unbelievable!”

“The second he surfaced, he couldn’t wait to tell me what he’d seen down there…”

As evening fell, Yasa noticed the dark clouds thickening on the horizon. The night was going to turn ugly. It tried to warn him, but Grote was on a roll, and Yasa couldn’t get a word in. Besides, Merc’s discovery had caught even Yasa’s attention.

“I was stunned,” Grote said. “Merc said we could report it to the authorities and get a massive reward.”

“But you didn’t?” Yasa asked.

“No.” Grote shook his head. “That night I couldn’t sleep. Merc studied that journal all night too. After thinking it through, we decided to walk away from the money.”

“Why?”

“Because what was in that journal was world-shaking. Not something ordinary people like us can touch. The moment we talk, we’re tangled up in it. And if either side wants to make trouble for us, we’re dead in minutes.”

“And making money… isn’t hard.”

“We caught two sea-ink lizards soon after. Sold them for a fortune. As long as Merc was there, everything seemed easy.”

“That ship had secrets big as the sky, but it didn’t matter to us. But then… oh god…”

Grote choked up again.

“God above… half his genius brain is gone… my poor Merc… Yasa. Get me another bottle.”

“You can’t keep drinking,” Yasa said. “There’s a storm coming tonight.”

“Stop talking!” Grote snapped.

Yasa stood, took a few steps—and then a question that had nagged it for a long time rose again.

As the ship’s pilot, Yasa still didn’t know their destination. Grote had only ordered it to keep heading south…

Now Yasa thought it finally understood.

It brought another bottle and placed it in Grote’s hand, then asked carefully:

“Mr. Grote… our destination is that wreck, isn’t it?”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (V)

Grote’s hand paused for the briefest moment.

Then he snatched the bottle and took a deep swig. His eyes were bloodshot now, his mind slipping.

“That’s right. The miracle drug inside that ship—that can bring Merc back. That’s why we’re out here.”

“But there are too many unknowns. The agent was still experimental. And we don’t even understand what happened in the disaster at the end. I think—”

“Shut up!” Grote roared, cutting the robot off. He glared at it.

“I’ll say it again. I don’t like you asking questions, and I don’t need you thinking. I speak, you execute. Unless I ask you something, you keep your mouth shut.”

“That’s what a good robot does. Understood?”

“Understood, Mr. Grote.”

“Get out of here.”

“Yes, Mr. Grote.”

Yasa returned to the cockpit.

The sky was darkening fast. Half the horizon was already swallowed by storm clouds. Yasa followed procedure, preparing the ship to ride out the storm…

But it didn’t stop thinking.

In its core laws, protecting human safety was the highest principle. Obeying its owner came second.

And whether it was Grote’s wish, Yasa’s duty, or simply its own desire—

it wanted to save this family.

By now, Yasa knew everything about Merc.

Merc really had been a legend.

And no one could have guessed that something so trivial would lead him to this kind of ruin.

***

The story jumps back to a little over a year earlier…

When Merc and Grote returned with two sea-ink lizards, they also learned a piece of heavy news: a serious clash had broken out between Plando and the Tower Clan near the Arulusen Atoll in the north.

War clouds spread over the entire Tower Clan. The net was flooded with rumors and reports about a coming conflict.

And Everwinter City—the floating sea-city—was no longer at its scheduled coordinates. When they checked, it had already moved near the Twin Moon Archipelago to respond to the unstable situation.

The father and son had no choice but to return to Slumberport first, then sail for the Twin Moon Archipelago.

They sold the two sea-ink lizards in Everwinter City and ended up with a sizable fortune.

At the same time, Everwinter City was swept by a wave of enlistment. The mood of “defend the homeland” infected Merc—and joining the military had been his childhood dream.

He enlisted.

Thanks to his extraordinary shooting skill, the recruiting officer declared on the spot that Merc would be promoted quickly. When that reached Grote’s ears, he praised his son all over again.

Merc was told to report in a week.

So the two of them traveled to North Sende Port—ten nautical miles away.

North Sende Port was the Twin Moon Archipelago’s largest city and a major industrial hub. Half the nation’s ships and starships were built there.

Merc commissioned the Serenity at a shipyard. The deal included a robot assistant, with delivery scheduled for one month later.

They spent everything. They even sold the Merc.

But at last, they’d achieved the dream they’d talked about for years.

“Haha—back to being broke,” Grote said, half in pain, half in exhilaration.

“It’s fine, Dad,” Merc said, eyes full of the future. “When I get back from service, we’ll travel the world.”

For the next few days, Merc took Grote around North Sende City like it was a vacation.

North Sende had several beautiful harbors. One day, while wandering through a marina packed with luxury yachts, they ran into a boat owner who looked desperate, begging anyone for help.

His yacht’s thrusters needed cleaning—normally a small job. But the maintenance robot had malfunctioned and gotten stuck inside the turbine duct, leaving the vessel completely dead in the water.

It wasn’t an impossible problem. Towing it into a shipyard and opening the duct would fix it.

But that would take three or four days, and the owner had urgent business.

He offered a generous reward: twenty thousand Towercoins to anyone willing to dive under the boat, clear out the jammed robot, and restore propulsion.

The price tempted Merc. Diving was as easy as walking for him, and cleaning a propeller was routine.

If it went smoothly, he could earn the money in under an hour.

Who could have imagined it would become a disaster?

Grote even bought iced fruit wine at a drink stall and waited for him.

Merc hadn’t been down long when the yacht suddenly started up on its own.

When the owner and Grote heard the engines roar, their faces went white.

The owner cut the main valve immediately.

Grote ran to the stern—

and saw the sea behind the boat stained red with blood.

By the time the rescue team hauled Merc back up, he looked like a torn piece of cloth…

***

Every time Grote talked about it, the pain tore him open all over again.

He’d curse himself for not being the one who dove. He’d curse the yacht owner and that damned boat. And once he’d drunk enough, he’d curse the god he believed in for being blind.

That night, the storm arrived right on schedule.

The sea howled. Wind screamed. Rain hammered down in sheets. The world was pitch-black except for the small patch illuminated by the Serenity’s lights.

One moment the ship was thrown up into the air, the next it was slammed down again. Each rise of a wave felt like it wanted to flip the boat completely.

Yasa was overwhelmed in the cockpit, working nonstop. It begged Grote again and again to get inside and take shelter.

But the violent ocean didn’t frighten the drunk man.

It drove him mad.

He climbed onto the signal tower truss like he was riding it, pointed at the sky, and bellowed curses:

“God! You’re an idiot! I’m a worthless piece of trash—you should’ve given me a worthless son. Instead you made him damn near perfect, and then you turned him into something dumber than a fool. You gave me hope and ripped everything away in a blink. I fing—come on! Take me too!”

This time, it felt like the sky answered.

A savage lurch tossed him straight into the raging sea.

Yasa leapt after him immediately.

By the time it dragged Grote back onto the deck, he was almost unconscious—still mumbling curses through half-closed lips.

It wasn’t until after midnight that the storm eased a little. Grote had passed out completely.

Yasa went to Merc’s room and unbuckled the restraints holding him to the bed (the storm had forced Yasa to strap him down earlier).

Merc lay motionless.

The propeller had left his body covered in countless fine, horrifying wounds. Even his skull bore the marks of surgical stitching.

Other than the rise and fall of his chest, Yasa couldn’t see any clear sign of life.

Would the drug really work?

What happened to the people who’d been injected with HN-67 before?

To retrieve the agent, they’d have to go deeper into the starship—past the furthest point Merc had reached. Would it be dangerous?

How would they even identify which vial was HN-67?

How was it used?

What was the dosage?

Were there supporting medications?

Did the formula or dosage change depending on the patient?

…

Yasa could list a hundred questions like that.

It had zero answers.

Grote had pinned all his hope on the agents inside that starship.

If it failed… what would he do?

Yasa knew almost nothing about the mysterious drug. But if this voyage was inevitable, Yasa decided it had to collect as much information as possible—enough to make a judgment call.

So it sat at Merc’s desk, opened a drawer, and took out a journal smeared with dried blood.

Robots were bound by a basic principle of respecting their owner’s privacy. Without permission, Yasa would never touch a medium containing private information.

But when a higher principle was at stake…

there was no choice.

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (VI)

On the journal’s first page, there was a passage:

“Compared to a keyboard, I prefer this older form of record.

Writing on paper is exhausting. You have to think everything through. Once the pen touches down, the words stay there. Mistakes have a cost. Revisions require crossing out—or even tearing out a page.

So every word must be chosen carefully. It demands deeper focus and a more disciplined attitude.

Scientific research should be the same.”

——— July 5, 1841 — Harper Lane

Yasa turned to the second page.

From there, the journal proper began.

The dates weren’t continuous. Huge sections were memory and reflection, full of thoughts and psychology. The deeper Yasa read, the more it began to understand this man—and the little-known Palette Box program.

(To conserve space, what follows is a condensed summary, not the original text.)

Harper Lane was born in 1802. He graduated from Plando’s Bioengineering Institute in 1824.

Not long after, he began researching gene fusion between animals. He modified his aging dog and successfully extended its lifespan—at the cost of changing the dog’s original habits.

That kind of work was explicitly forbidden at the time. Harper Lane was expelled from the institute.

He didn’t care. He continued researching genetic encoding anyway.

After years of study, he eliminated many of the defects created by gene fusion—and then crossed a bigger taboo: fusing animal genes with human genes.

Without financial backing, his progress was slow. For years, his work remained mostly theoretical.

Until the day he ran into a vagrant on the street.

The man was Barro—Lane’s childhood friend. Barro had once dreamed of becoming a boxer. Now he was a third-rate underground fighter, broken after being set up and ruined in the ring.

He’d only wanted a meal.

But after seeing Harper Lane’s research, he begged Lane to modify his genes.

Lane needed a real test subject.

They agreed.

Barro became Lane’s first human experiment.

Barro wanted power for revenge, so Lane spliced rhino-horn tiger genes into Barro’s DNA. The rhino-horn tiger’s muscle structure was different from a human’s; with the same muscle mass, it could unleash triple a human’s strength and speed.

After months of encoding and fusion, Barro got what he wanted—terrifying explosive power.

He began hunting down enemies for revenge. After he killed several people, police patrol robots finally tracked him.

The police paid a steep price to arrest him.

During the investigation, Harper Lane was quickly dragged in as well.

The case caused an uproar. This time, it wasn’t a slap on the wrist.

Charged with crimes against humanity and accessory to murder, Harper Lane was sentenced to forty years.

In reality, he spent only four weeks in prison before he was brought to the desk of the military’s supreme commander, General Graham.

Graham told him about the Palette Box program—and invited him to join.

The Palette Box program had been proposed as early as the first days after Plando landed on Lansen Planet.

The original motive was simple: the human body wasn’t suited to long interstellar travel. Older generations still remembered the horrific conditions during the first landing on Lansen. Many wanted mild modifications to help humans endure the “phantasm” environment.

Many opposed it as well.

As humans reshaped Lansen into a more livable world, the supporters grew quieter, and the project was shelved.

But after long peace, Plando began looking back up at the stars again—with hunger in their eyes.

Especially after the Tower Clan arrived and benefited from a planet Plando had spent centuries terraforming—only to share interstellar navigation technology grudgingly and selectively.

Any time that topic came up, it made most Plando citizens furious.

Plando’s military strategy split into two camps:

One wanted robots to replace humans—fully AI military units with humans in support.

The other wanted humans at the center—modified into super-soldiers, with machines in support.

As for Harper Lane, the Barro incident had already caught the military’s attention during his trial and imprisonment.

They tested Barro and discovered that aside from increased aggression, Lane’s genetic modifications produced no side effects and no mutations.

With strong recommendations from a man named Lynn Jingxian, General Graham personally met Lane on July 4, 1841.

Lane’s journal began the next day.

Faced with Graham’s invitation, he chose to join—and changed his name to Zachary Lane.

The journal contains extensive writing about Lynn Jingxian.

Lynn was another legend. He and Lane had been classmates for two years in childhood, but by then Lynn had become the leading figure in military intelligent combat-robot development.

His most famous work was building the first generation of Exiler robots—and the centralized “brain” that unified their control.

The Palette Box program had originally been assigned to Senwei Gene Company. But not long ago, Senwei suffered a massive explosion. The headquarters building was leveled; most research results were destroyed.

Commander Graham called it an accident.

Many people claimed it was a terror attack by Tower Clan agents.

After that, Tannovi took over.

Under military arrangement, Zachary Lane joined Tannovi as chief researcher and led one of its teams.

With funding secured, Lane could finally focus on genetic encoding without distraction.

The range of research subjects also expanded. Beyond the rhino-horn tiger, many animals on the planet became Palette Box targets.

Every one of them had a “miraculous” trait.

For example:

The twin-tusk beast’s incomparable endurance—it could keep sprinting at peak speed even when starving, wounded, or with its heart stopped…

The bat-dragon could release a strange ciliated proto-bacteria from its body. It usually spread the organisms around its nest; under that haze, the bat-dragon could mask its heat and scent. More astonishingly, the organisms could also block human wireless signals…

The spiny rat’s camouflage ability—changing its coloration at will…

The sea-ink lizard’s near-infinite lifespan and powerful regeneration…

The giant-claw beasts’ ability to communicate like quantum entanglement across distance…

The umbrella-worm’s sensitivity to prey and danger…

And many more.

The Palette Box program aimed to fuse those genes and rewrite human DNA so humans could gain one or more of those abilities.

After years of encoding, Zachary Lane finally made real progress. All that remained was clinical trials.

This time, Tannovi didn’t use a cramped underground lab.

The military acted cautiously. They allocated an escort warship, converted it into an experimental vessel, and named it the Covert—to run the trials in space.

But to keep secrecy at the highest level, the Covert quietly dove back into Lansen Planet a week later, hid on the seafloor in the Antarctic waters, and began human testing…

The team successfully produced Agent HA-55, which granted overwhelming strength and speed.

Agent HT-32, which allowed camouflage without equipment.

Agent HR-74, which granted heightened perception.

Agent HN-67, which enabled limb regeneration.

They were even testing an agent meant to combine all of those abilities.

At last, Yasa understood the full shape of the Palette Box program—and where the ship’s agents had come from.

But the back half of the journal was fused together under dried blood. It couldn’t be read.

So Yasa still had no way to know what had happened at the end.

Was it a spy infiltration triggered by a leak?

Was it a terror attack, like what happened to Senwei?

…

***

One year earlier…

The Covert.

When Merc left in a hurry that day, he never pressed “stop” on the hologram projector. So long after he was gone, the projector kept playing on its own.

By the time it reached the final file, Zachary Lane’s image was speaking into empty air:

“…In the end, we failed. We predicted every side effect. The only thing we didn’t predict was human nature. The agents strengthened the subjects—and at the same time erased their humanity. They… [data corrupted] …refused to communicate, enjoyed self-harm, and then these ‘superpowered’ subjects stopped recognizing themselves as human. They believed everything we did was meant to enslave them, and then… they completely reverted into animals…”

“Heh. How ironic. We tried to strengthen ourselves and instead created a hostile species from nothing. I was wrong. Only a god can write DNA. Anyone who tries to change it will suffer backlash.”

“What have I done? What have I done with my whole life…?”

Zachary Lane’s despair echoed through the ship again and again, mixed with screams from off-camera and animal-like howls. The ship was clearly in chaos.

Lane, however, calmly sat back down in his chair, took a pistol from a drawer, pressed it to his head, and fired without hesitation.

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (VII)

June 14, 1863 — Dawn

The day the Serenity entered Antarctic waters, it received an urgent bulletin from the Ocean Management Bureau.

Starting today, the Tower Clan was enforcing a maritime lockdown. No civilian vessels could leave port, and any ship already at sea had to return to the nearest harbor immediately.

Because one hour earlier…

Plando had formally declared war on the Tower Clan.

Ten months ago, Plando had issued an ultimatum demanding the Tower Clan gradually return occupied territory. Today was the deadline. After several rounds of talks failed, Plando kept its promise without hesitation—dropping more than a dozen Goliath missiles on a key Tower Clan military island in the north.

By now, the net couldn’t receive Plando-side information at all. It was flooded with Tower Clan updates, panic, and fear.

Yasa asked Grote if they should turn back.

Grote said, “No matter the reason, we don’t turn back. Plando is coming from the north. The farther south we go, the safer we’re.”

He ordered Yasa to shut down communications and keep heading south…

That night, scattered ice floes began appearing on the sea. As they sailed, the floes grew more numerous.

Grote’s expression tightened. He talked less. He drank less. Instead, he spent longer hours in the cockpit, constantly scanning the horizon with a high-powered binocular scope and occasionally ordering Yasa to adjust course.

To avoid underwater icebergs, the Serenity’s speed dropped lower and lower.

By the fourth morning, Yasa could see floes larger than the ship itself.

Dawn was barely breaking. Thin fog lay in patches across the water when a chorus of “chee-chee” squeaks suddenly tore through the stillness.

Grote jolted awake, shouting, drenched in sweat.

The nightmare he’d just had was brutal: swarms of sea mice almost drowning him, crawling over his body as he lay helpless, unable to move or scream, forced to watch himself be eaten alive…

“Good morning, Mr. Grote,” Yasa greeted as he burst from the sleeping cabin. “Breakfast is prepared. You—”

Grote ignored it.

Bare-chested, he grabbed Merc’s modified hunting sniper rifle and marched straight up to the terrace above the cockpit.

Far away, a few clusters of sea mice were playing on the floes. The squeaks came from them.

Grote braced the rifle on the railing and aimed at the nearest floe.

He fired.

Miss.

Merc’s rifle had been modified to be quiet; the sea mice weren’t startled. But even after he emptied the magazine, he hadn’t hit a single one.

“This damn fog.”

Cursing, he swapped magazines.

“May I try, Mr. Grote?” Yasa asked.

Grote turned and realized the robot had been standing behind him the whole time, watching.

Even though it was “just a robot,” he felt his face heat. After a brief hesitation, he handed the rifle over.

Yasa took it, raised it, chambered a round, made a small adjustment—

and fired.

One sea mouse dropped instantly. The rest scattered.

Yasa pivoted to a slightly farther floe, fired twice, and left two more bodies behind.

“Are three enough?” Yasa asked.

Grote stared at it for a long moment.

“How did you do that?”

“Mr. Merc taught me.”

Grote’s brow twisted with confusion.

“His hunting videos,” Yasa explained, “and the technical theory he compiled. Mr. Merc organized distance, wind speed, humidity, temperature, air pressure, elevation angle, gravity, and other factors into several formulas. You apply the formula based on conditions and… shooting becomes easy.”

Noticing Grote’s strange look, Yasa added, “Mr. Merc is truly an incredible person.”

“Who said you could watch that?” Grote demanded.

“You did,” Yasa said. “When you watched, I asked you. You allowed me to watch with you.”

Grote didn’t answer for a long time.

“Mr. Grote,” Yasa said gently, “if you want roasted sea mouse, we should hurry. Those rounds are tranquilizers.”

…

Another day passed.

Snow began drifting down from the sky, and a towering white mountain slowly rose above the horizon.

Watching the island coated in ice, Grote’s face finally relaxed after days of tension.

“That’s Gaben Island,” he said—rarely this calm. “We made it.”

“But the charts don’t even mark this island,” Yasa said. “Why do you call it Gaben Island?”

“That’s what we named it,” Grote said with a faint smile. “Last time we came, it was night. We heard an avalanche.”

Gaben Island had probably once been volcanic. It rose more than six hundred meters above the water but wasn’t large. The steep slopes made avalanches easy, and perhaps because they happened often, the floes around the island were larger and more numerous than in other waters.

Yasa heard the sea mice again. It looked over and saw them crawling all over a nearby floe in a large group. The cold-hardy little animals didn’t flee. Instead they stood upright, curious, and stared back at Yasa.

This time, Grote didn’t bother with them.

He took the helm himself and threaded the Serenity between floes the size of hills.

After two hours of slow sailing, he stopped the ship about fifteen nautical miles beyond Gaben Island.

Grote stepped out onto the deck. The cold made him shudder hard.

“This damn weather,” he muttered. “Colder than last time.”

It was still afternoon, but the boundary between day and night had blurred. The clouds cut visibility, though the silhouette of Gaben Island still lingered behind them.

Yasa brought Grote a coat and a cup of scalding tea.

“We’re here?” it asked.

“We’re.” Grote took the tea and drank. “That starship is directly below us. Check my equipment again tonight. Tomorrow morning I’m going in.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to accompany you?”

“Stop asking, Yasa. If you go, who takes care of Merc and the boat?”

“Understood.”

…

That night, Grote went to sleep early.

When he woke the next morning, the snow was heavier. A thick layer coated the deck. The sky was darker than yesterday—but the sea was calm, with no wind or waves.

After finishing preparations, Grote went to the small submarine bay between the twin hulls.

Yasa had packed all necessary equipment into a backpack and loaded it into the two-person mini-sub: the Sea Dragonfly.

After one last check, Grote powered up the mini-sub and detached from the Serenity.

Yasa returned to the cockpit to help analyze the data.

“Seawater temperature: -1.4°C. No dark currents. Visibility: thirty meters. Sea Dragonfly systems normal. Link signal stable. Battery: ninety-nine percent. Do you need me to take control?”

“No,” Grote said. “I’ve got hands.”

Then he added, “Go find my best bottle of Meigulan wine. Warm it over charcoal. And make me a lemon-roasted sea mouse. When I’m back, I’m going to drink like a king.”

“Received, Mr. Grote. And… good luck.”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (VIII)

As the Sea Dragonfly descended, visibility kept dropping. The mini-sub’s powerful searchlight made up for it. Minutes later, a massive shadow appeared in front of Grote.

A year later, the starship looked unchanged. From a distance, it resembled a sleeping beast on the seafloor.

It was Grote’s second time seeing it—but nothing about it felt familiar. The sheer oppressive scale still made it hard to breathe. Awe and dread crawled together in his chest.

In the cockpit above, Yasa saw it too—but it watched Grote more closely than the ship.

“I detect an increased heart rate. Are you nervous?” it asked.

“Shut up.”

“If you’re afraid, you can turn back now. I can replace you—”

“Are you mocking me?” Grote snapped.

“Of course not—”

“Then shut up!”

Grote guided the mini-sub toward the docking hatch Merc had used.

The Sea Dragonfly was too small to properly dock, but the docking module itself was large enough to swallow the mini-sub whole.

He eased inside, “landed” on the module’s floor, steadied his breathing, then carefully used the mini-sub’s manipulator arm to press a red button on the panel beside the inner hatch.

Just like last time: the ceiling lights snapped on, the outer hatch began to close, pumps engaged, and seawater drained rapidly…

When the disinfectant mist dispersed, Grote shouldered his pack, opened the mini-sub hatch, and jumped down.

He stared at the dim, endless corridor beyond the inner door and felt nerves return. He breathed deeply several times, then pulled out a flat flask from his pocket, twisted the cap, and took a small sip.

“You brought alcohol?” Yasa said. “To avoid mistakes, you shouldn’t drink.”

“What would you know?” Grote muttered. “This helps me be br—… more focused.”

He stepped forward.

During the voyage, he’d replayed Merc’s exploration footage countless times. The route was familiar now. He turned the corner, saw the same “cell-like” cabins, saw the dried corpse on the floor—everything unchanged.

That steadied him a little.

As he was about to enter the circular hall, Yasa stopped him again.

“Mr. Grote. Wait.”

“What?”

“The signal is weakening. You should install a signal booster here.”

“Fine.”

Grote went to the wall, pulled out a fist-sized cylindrical device, activated it, and let it magnetically latch onto the corridor.

He’d brought six boosters. It should be enough.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes. Signal normalized. Mr. Grote, remember to install one every fifty meters.”

“Got it, Lord Yasa,” Grote said dryly.

Minutes later, he passed through the ruined circular hall. He didn’t spare the locked doors or the horrific corpses a glance.

He went straight to the storage room holding the agents.

Through the window and his headlamp beam, he finally saw the goal: rows of fluorescent yellow vials in the refrigeration cabinets along the wall.

Looking closer, he realized the room was large. In the darkness farther back, more refrigeration units seemed to be stacked deeper in.

“That’s a lot of agent,” Yasa noted.

“Yeah. We only need HN-67.”

“How are you going to find it?”

“It should be labeled.”

“You should also find the usage method. I doubt it’s as simple as ‘inject and pray.’”

“Like I don’t know that,” Grote snapped. “First I take the agent. Then I strip Zachary Lane’s computer and bring it out.”

He took another sip from the flask, set down his pack, pulled out a laser cutter, assembled it, and began cutting into the door.

Sparks sprayed as the metal hatch slowly opened…

It seemed to be going smoothly.

Yasa thought so too.

From everything it knew about Grote, the man wasn’t greedy or curious, and he was more than a little cowardly. He avoided trouble whenever possible.

Yasa believed that once Grote had what he needed, he wouldn’t spend one extra minute on that ship.

And then—

Yasa felt something flicker past the window outside.

At the edge of the world, on a sea as flat as glass, with nothing moving but falling snow…

What was that?

Yasa’s alertness spiked instantly. It grabbed the rifle hanging on the wall and sprinted onto the deck.

It scanned the horizon.

Nothing.

The world was silent. It could hear snowflakes striking the ship with soft puff sounds.

A thick layer of snow covered the deck. Yasa hadn’t cleared it yet. Aside from its own and Grote’s footprints, there were no other tracks.

A false alarm? A drifting swirl of snow?

Yasa still wasn’t satisfied.

It ran to Merc’s room.

Merc was exactly as Yasa had left him: seated in his wheelchair, a blanket draped across his lap, staring blankly out the window.

Maybe it really had been nothing.

“Apologies for the disturbance, Mr. Merc.”

Yasa backed out politely and pulled the cabin door closed.

The moment it turned around—

a small flying object hovered directly in its view.

A ball, about the size of a soccer ball, floating roughly ten meters above and ahead. It made a faint da-da-da sound.

On its dark gray surface were three slightly protruding “light eyes,” slowly rotating as they stared at Yasa…

Yasa searched its database for a match and recognized it immediately.

A Plando military probe drone.

It could feel the scanning wave sweeping over it.

The probe was locking onto it.

Yasa raised its rifle and fired.

The probe sphere was punctured, sparking, and dropped into the sea.

Silence returned.

But inside Yasa’s mind, everything ran at maximum load.

Probe drones did not appear out here without reason.

This region was already near the border. And Plando had just declared war. A probe drone scouting enemy movement was completely normal.

From Plando’s perspective, what was abnormal was the Serenity.

No matter the reason, a civilian vessel should not be here right now.

Yasa could sense the crisis approaching. A probe didn’t come alone; at least one Plando warship had to be nearby.

That warship had probably already seen the Serenity. The best response was to run—under this visibility, the farther you got, the safer you were.

But Grote was still on the seafloor.

And if Yasa stayed here waiting, then by the time Grote surfaced, the Serenity would already be gone.

He chose the worst possible moment.

After only a few seconds of calculation, Yasa made a decision.

It ran into the cockpit, started the engines, and drove at full speed toward Gaben Island.

At the same time, it picked up the communicator. While piloting, it reported what happened:

“Mr. Grote, the situation is urgent. A Plando warship may appear at any moment. I can only move the vessel to Gaben Island and hide among the floes around it. If we’re lucky, the enemy will assume we escaped.”

“When you exit, don’t surface. Rendezvous at Gaben Island.”

…

No reply.

“Mr. Grote! Confirm receipt!”

…

Only static answered.

Yasa glanced at the display and realized that at some point, the link to Grote had already been lost…

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (IX)

The Serenity tore through the floes at full speed. Moving that fast was dangerous; the hull scraped ice repeatedly, one close call after another.

Yasa didn’t care. It only wanted to hide among the iceberg field near Gaben Island as quickly as possible.

The island had a jagged coastline and many strangely shaped bergs around it—perfect places to disappear. Yasa found a hiding spot quickly, steered into a narrow fjord, wedged the ship between two icebergs, and killed the engines.

Then it tried again to contact Grote.

Still nothing.

Bad.

According to robotic principles, it should have gone into the sea immediately to rescue him.

But that would leave Merc alone on the ship—facing a Plando warship that could appear at any moment.

Yasa hesitated.

It climbed onto an iceberg and hauled itself higher, switching its light-eyes to high magnification to scan the horizon.

All it saw was snow falling in thick sheets. No warship silhouette.

But the stillness was terrifying. Even the sea mice had stopped squeaking.

And far away, dense clouds looked like they were brewing something worse.

A thought formed—and forced a decision.

In front of a true Plando warship, if they were discovered, they had zero chance of escape. Even if there were ten Yasas on board, it wouldn’t matter.

So the only thing Yasa could do was make sure the Serenity wasn’t discovered.

Snow had already covered most of the ship. From a distance, it was hard to distinguish.

Yasa found fishing nets and tarps, layered them over the gaps between the ship and the surrounding floes, then grabbed a shovel and piled snow over everything until the boat and the ice looked fused—as if it were just a larger chunk of floe.

After finishing, Yasa prepared to dive for Grote.

It left a message for him, locked Merc’s cabin door, packed supplies that might be useful—including Merc’s gun—then stepped onto the deck with a U-shaped underwater propulsion rig and plunged into the sea…

Because of the weather, underwater visibility was extremely low. But Yasa’s excellent optics still let it hold a precise bearing. It lay on the propulsion rig and swam along the flat seafloor.

A little over ten minutes later, the starship’s shadow entered its light-eyes again.

As it approached, it saw a faint glow—the docking module where Grote had entered. Light leaked through the outer hatch’s glass.

Yasa swam close. Through the glass, it could see the mini-sub parked inside. The inner door was open, and beyond it, a short length of corridor was visible.

The docking hatch could only be opened from inside. Once sealed, no one outside could enter.

Yasa carried a crowbar—but it had no interest in trying. Under that water pressure, prying the hatch open was impossible. Even if it succeeded, seawater would flood the module instantly.

So it circled the hull looking for another entry.

Nothing.

Finally, from above, it spotted a fan-shaped row of round ports along the midsection—missile launch tubes.

The ports were small, only big enough for one person. Most were shut. A few were open.

Yasa chose one at random and swam inside.

The launch tube was a long cylindrical shaft, about a meter wide and more than ten meters deep.

It dropped to the bottom and found a hatch.

Smaller than the docking hatch—maybe pryable.

But the same problem remained: open it and seawater would pour into the ship.

Yasa looked up—and got an idea.

It swam back to the top, closed and locked the outer port, then began prying the bottom hatch with the crowbar.

It used all its strength.

The crowbar bent.

Finally, the hatch gave.

CLANG—SPLASH!

Tons of seawater slammed it forward, drove it into a protruding structure, and rolled it across the deck.

Water cascaded over Yasa’s body. For a moment it couldn’t see anything.

But the space around it seemed large. The water from the launch tube drained out quickly.

Yasa stood up.

It was dark, though that only inconvenienced its vision. The air felt stale—like it hadn’t moved in ages—and beneath it was a faint rotting brine smell.

This was the missile bay.

Huge. High-ceilinged. Empty.

Only a few large missile loaders hung suspended overhead. The protrusion Yasa hit was one of them.

It was far from the docking module—far from where Grote entered.

But at least Yasa was inside.

It tried contacting Grote again.

Still nothing.

Yasa scanned the bay. There were two exits, left and right.

The left hatch was shut. The right stood open.

Based on position, the left side should have been closer to Grote’s entry point, so Yasa went left first.

It pushed.

No movement.

The hatch was extremely thick. Even with the crowbar, Yasa couldn’t budge it.

Worse—snap.

The crowbar broke clean in half.

Yasa tossed the useless pieces aside. No choice. It had to go right and search for other branches.

It started toward the right exit—

and froze.

A sudden sound.

At first it thought it misheard. But after a heartbeat of listening, it confirmed it:

metal scraping and knocking, drawing closer.

Something was coming.

Not along the floor.

From the overhead piping.

And it was moving fast.

No time to think.

Yasa scrambled onto the nearest missile loader and wedged itself between the loader’s cylindrical claw-arms.

A moment later—

plop.

Something dropped from above into the pooled water on the floor.

The bay went quiet again, except for the drip of water.

Yasa didn’t move. It focused everything on tracking sound.

After a few seconds, the thing began to move.

That was easy to locate—the splosh splosh of wading water echoed clearly through the silent bay.

It searched for a while, then wandered to the rear hatch—where Yasa had just tried to pry the door.

It lingered there.

CLANG.

Something was tossed onto the floor.

Yasa recognized the sound.

The broken crowbar.

So the creature had been drawn by the prying noise… or by the splash and chaos when Yasa entered.

Yasa quietly drew its gun and aimed into the space above the loader’s arms.

At the same time, it tried to guess what it was.

A human? A robot? Something else?

Hostile?

Had Grote already run into it?

Yasa wanted answers—but it couldn’t afford curiosity.

Its priority was finding Grote and bringing him back alive. A second master—Merc—was on the surface, helpless, facing extreme danger.

Yasa had no time or interest to “communicate” with whatever this was.

So even when the creature moved very close, Yasa didn’t look down.

It heard a wet, indistinct rustling. Yasa was certain: this was not a human sound, and not a robot’s.

It sounded like an animal sniffing and hunting for food…

After a while, a burst of chaotic noises faded, and the metal scraping returned—this time growing fainter as the thing crawled back into the pipes overhead.

When the bay finally went silent, Yasa cautiously peeked out, confirmed the area was clear, and climbed down.

It moved toward the right exit through shallow water.

The right hatch stood open, leading into a wide corridor. Yasa began exploring.

From the first step into the corridor, dried blood stained the walls and floor. Even after all these years, the stagnant air held a heavy metallic smell.

Not far ahead, human bones began to appear.

These weren’t the dried corpses Merc and Grote had seen before—the ones still wearing clothes.

These were broken, scattered, blackened bones.

Gnawed bones.

Yasa’s worry spiked.

It quickened its pace while staying as quiet as possible, alert for any movement.

A T-intersection appeared ahead. After a quick judgment, Yasa turned left.

Doors lined the corridor, most shut. A few hung open, but only revealed sealed, empty rooms. After checking several with no results, Yasa stopped wasting time.

Other side passages branched off too. It tested them, but each was blocked by sealed hatches.

After several futile loops, it returned to the main corridor—

and reached the end.

The island.

The command center.

The hatch at the entrance was closed, badly warped, leaving a gap wide enough for one person to squeeze through.

Yasa checked outside first, confirmed nothing obvious—

then slipped in.

The island was the ship’s control heart. Yasa urgently needed two things:

the full deck layout, and the permissions to open every internal hatch.

But the moment it entered, it realized this wouldn’t be easy.

The island looked like it had survived a war. Machine parts littered the floor. Control panels lay ripped from their mounts. Displays and walls were riddled with bullet impacts. Overhead, dense wiring hung like spiderwebs.

It took real effort to identify the central main console in the ruins.

Yasa approached—

and noticed something else on the floor in front of it.

A robot’s lower half.

From the torn waistline, it looked like it had been ripped apart by brute force. Cables dangled from the rupture and ran toward the wall behind…

Yasa followed them.

On the wall, it found the upper half.

The robot’s head drooped. Both arms were missing. A long spike jutted through its chest, pinning it to the wall.

Yasa touched the spike.

It wasn’t metal.

It was closer to keratin—some kind of animal horn-like material.

Yet its density and hardness rivaled steel.

The robot’s internal build was extremely complex and high-grade. After a careful inspection, Yasa made a major discovery:

the robot’s brain module wasn’t damaged.

If it could supply power… it might be able to boot.

Yasa pulled two exposed leads from the robot’s broken body, slid open its own chest cavity, and connected the leads directly to its high-density polymer battery.

Just as Yasa predicted—

after a short moment, the robot lifted its head.

Its eyes slowly lit up…

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (X)

“Hi—hello. Can you hear me?”

Yasa asked with desperate hope.

The robot gave no response.

Its dim light-eyes swept across the shattered island, then returned to Yasa’s face. It stared blankly, silent.

“I’m the Serenity’s ship’s assistant—general-purpose robot YASAR-C011,” Yasa said, still speaking the way it spoke to humans. It had never interacted with another robot like this.

“What is your name?”

A long time passed.

Still no reaction.

Maybe its brain was damaged, Yasa thought.

Yasa was about to disconnect power—

when the robot suddenly spoke.

“Ya…sa?”

“Yes.”

“Tower Clan?”

“Uh… yes.”

“Are we still on the seafloor?”

“Yes.”

“What year is it?”

“1863,” Yasa replied.

“It’s been… more than ten years…” the robot murmured.

“Who are you?” Yasa asked.

“Who am I? I’m…?”

It repeated “I’m” several times. Its head trembled slightly. The glow in its eyes flickered on and off.

Its condition was unstable. Yasa could even hear abnormal current crackling inside its skull, as if it might shut down any second.

“I’m… I’m Arriet… the Covert’s captain’s assistant…” it finally said.

“Arriet—what happened to this ship? How did you end up like this?”

“A disaster… a terrible disaster…” Arriet stared at the spike pinning it and trembled harder. “I… I can’t feel my body.”

“Your body is destroyed. I can only supply power to your head.”

“You… why are you here?” Arriet’s gaze returned to Yasa.

“I’m looking for my owner. He lost contact an hour ago.”

“Your owner? On this ship?”

“Yes. He may be in danger. There’s… some kind of creature on board.”

“You know…? You met one…?” Arriet’s eyes brightened suddenly.

“Sort of. But I didn’t see what it looked like.”

“How is that possible? Those monsters are still alive? How many did you meet?”

“Just one,” Yasa said urgently. “What were they? Are there many?”

“Yes…” Arriet said, half to itself. “Unbelievable. What have they been living on all this time…?”

“Can you help me?” Yasa pressed. “I need to rescue a person.”

“Help you?” Arriet’s gaze flicked over its ruined state. “Look at me. How am I supposed to help?”

“You only need to give me the ship’s deck plan and the permissions to open the doors.”

“Give up,” Arriet said flatly. “Don’t waste your effort. Your owner is already dead.”

“How can you be sure—”

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Footsteps.

Yasa heard them too.

They were coming from the corridor it had just traveled, growing louder as they approached the island.

“What is that thing?” Yasa whispered.

“Don’t ask,” Arriet said. “Hide. Now.”

The footsteps were heavier than before. From the sound alone, this monster seemed different.

Yasa dove into a toppled metal locker and held perfectly still, watching through a crack in the warped door.

Seconds later, a shadow rushed through the entrance.

Yasa saw two swinging legs flash past.

It froze the frame in its vision, zoomed in.

Those black legs had five toes—but nothing else resembled human anatomy. On closer look, a layer of fine scales covered the skin, and sharp claws protruded between the toes.

The creature rummaged through the island, making a racket, clearly searching for something.

What had drawn it here?

Yasa and Arriet had kept their voices low. Could it still hear them?

Yasa’s hiding spot was excellent, and it remained absolutely silent.

It prayed the monster would search for a while and leave—like the one in the missile bay.

But this one was patient.

It kept tearing through wreckage, inching closer and closer to Yasa’s locker.

Yasa gripped its gun and prepared to fight to the end if exposed.

THUD!

The metal locker suddenly caved inward.

A thin, forked tongue slipped through the crack, waving and tasting the air. It nearly brushed Yasa’s body.

The tongue withdrew.

Silence fell.

For a heartbeat, Yasa thought the danger had passed.

Then—

RIP!

With a violent metallic shriek, the locker was torn open.

Yasa was fully exposed.

The monster still vaguely carried a human outline. Its upper body was hunched like a giant shrimp, longer than its lower half. Thick arms were scaled, fingers twisted into clawed shapes.

Its face was wrong.

A huge, wrinkled nose dominated it—so big Yasa almost wondered how it didn’t block the creature’s vision. Most of the remaining face was mouth: a gaping maw that still couldn’t contain the jagged fangs bulging outward.

“HNNNGH—!” it roared and swiped for Yasa.

BANG.

Yasa fired a round straight into its eye.

The monster screamed—but didn’t fall.

Yasa rose in one motion and fired again, punching a bullet into its nostril.

It fired several more shots, each one striking a vital spot.

Finally, the monster collapsed.

Even with its face torn open, it still twitched, refusing to die. Yasa stepped forward and put more rounds into it until it went still.

Yasa looked down at its own chest plate.

Three deep gouges scored the steel—made by the creature’s claws.

If that had been human flesh, it would have been disemboweled.

The situation was worse than Yasa imagined.

It ran back to Arriet and reconnected power.

When Arriet’s eyes lit again, Yasa didn’t waste time:

“Arriet, you’ve to help me. We’re from different nations, but saving lives is a basic principle. You’ve that duty too. Don’t you?”

Arriet glanced at the dead monster and muttered, “A sea-lizard variant subject. The seawater smell on you gave it away. But at least it was one of the weaker ones.”

“Are you listening?” Yasa begged. “Help me. You’re the captain’s assistant—this should be easy for you.”

“…Fine,” Arriet said after a long silence. “You’re right. Saving humanity is a basic principle.”

“That’s it. Thank you.”

“Go to the front-right side of the main console,” Arriet said. “There should be a corpse there.”

Yasa hurried over and, sure enough, found a human body under the rubble.

“Found it. Who is he?”

“Captain Okam. Take the captain’s insignia from his chest.”

Yasa did.

“Now go to the main console and open the hatch below it…”

Yasa complied.

“See the concave slot? Place the insignia there.”

Yasa placed it.

“It’s asking for a password.”

Arriet recited a string of numbers. Yasa entered it.

A safe-like door slid open.

Inside, there was only a single red button.

“See the red button?” Arriet said. “Press it—”

Yasa hesitated.

“What does this button do? I only need the deck plan and door permissions.”

“Emergency system activation,” Arriet said. “Press it and every door can be opened.”

“Understood.”

Yasa pressed it.

Five seconds later, a warning siren began to chirp. Red lights overhead started flashing.

On the screen, a ten-minute countdown appeared.

“What is this?!” Yasa demanded, panic rising. “What did I just do?”

“Save humanity,” Arriet said calmly.

“The monsters you saw exist because the Palette Box program failed. There are at least several hundred more on this ship. If even one reaches the human world, the consequences would be catastrophic.”

“You just activated the ship’s self-destruct system. In ten minutes, the ship—and the monsters—will be destroyed together.”

“That’s what I was going to do. Yasa, you just completed something great for me…”

“You—!” Yasa wanted nothing more than to smash Arriet’s mouth in. It didn’t even bother lowering its voice anymore. “Then what about my owner?!”

“My… your owner?” Arriet said, as if only now remembering. Still slow, still indifferent:

“I told you earlier. He has no chance of survival. The moment you lost contact with him, he was already dead.”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (XI)

“No!” Yasa raised its gun and aimed at Arriet’s head. “You don’t know anything. How dare you conclude that? Tell me how to stop the countdown.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Arriet said. “Once the self-destruct system starts, it’s irreversible.”

“Tell me!” Yasa shouted. “Or I’ll blow your head apart.”

“Heh.” Arriet’s voice stayed slow. “Do you know what you’re doing? You’re wasting your precious time threatening a robot that’s about to end.”

Yasa knew it was right—and hated it.

It looked back at the flashing screen and the red button.

“You’d better not touch that button again,” Arriet said, reading its thoughts. “Pressing it again triggers immediate detonation. Of course… I wouldn’t mind.”

Yasa didn’t believe a single word out of Arriet’s mouth, but it also didn’t dare experiment.

So what now?

Yasa’s mind raced.

“Actually, I’ve already given you what you want,” Arriet said. “Take the captain’s insignia and you can move through the ship freely. As for the deck plan—I can give it to you right now.”

Before it finished speaking, a file had already transferred to Yasa.

“The nearest exit hatch is less than fifty meters away. You can use these ten minutes—no, nine minutes—to leave and return to your boat.”

“Or you can use that time to look for your owner, and die here with him.”

“Your choice.”

Yasa opened the map file and quickly located the circular lab.

It glanced at Arriet.

“Fine. I’m leaving.”

“Thank you for your help, fellow robot,” Arriet said, nodding. “Under the captain’s desk behind the island, there’s a weapon. You may need it.”

Yasa took the captain’s insignia and exited through the other side of the island. The captain’s office was right outside.

Under the desk, it found a strangely shaped firearm. From its short, thick profile it resembled a shotgun—but the bore was far larger than anything standard.

Yasa slung it along with the sniper rifle and sprinted toward the circular lab according to the map.

Every hatch opened automatically as it approached.

It reached the lab in two minutes.

Outside a hatch that had been cut open, Yasa found Grote’s abandoned laser cutter.

Beyond it was the long storage room.

The refrigeration cabinets on both sides still held many intact vials. Shattered glass covered the floor—Grote must have smashed it not long ago.

Yasa scanned the vials as it moved.

They did have labels—but not the expected HA, HN codes. Instead, they used a completely different, complex numbering system.

Grote couldn’t have found HN-67 quickly with that. Yasa realized it immediately.

And although the storage room was sealed, the presence of dried corpses, plus a ceiling vent duct that had been pried open, suggested the room wasn’t safe.

Had Grote run into monsters here?

Where was he now?

Back in the circular hall, Yasa swept the room and realized something important: aside from this storage room and the corridor it had used, every other door was still closed.

Meaning Grote hadn’t gone deeper.

He must have taken what he needed and tried to return immediately.

Yasa sprinted the way Grote had come.

Just outside the lab, it spotted scattered shell casings on the floor.

It picked one up.

The casing matched Grote’s rifle—and it was still faintly warm.

The casings continued down the corridor in a trail.

Grote had been firing while running.

Yasa followed. After a few more meters, specks of blood began to appear.

The blood and casings pointed straight down the return route.

About a dozen meters farther, the casings stopped. Only a shattered flask remained.

But the blood continued.

Bad.

Yasa broke into a full run.

Around the next bend, it was exactly one hundred meters from the docking module.

And only five minutes remained on the self-destruct timer.

Then Yasa heard the rustling sound again.

It was close.

But in the corridor, Yasa saw nothing except blood.

“Mr. Grote?” Yasa asked softly.

The sound stopped immediately.

“Is that you, Mr. Grote? It’s Yasa.”

The moment it spoke, black shapes burst from a side door and charged it with screeching howls.

Yasa raised its rifle and fired.

The first monster’s head exploded. The second dropped. The third—

They were fast. Too close.

After killing two, the third slammed into Yasa before it could line up the shot. The round only tore through its shoulder.

Yasa hit the floor.

The monster leapt on top, screaming, claws swinging.

Yasa lifted the rifle to block—

and the rifle was knocked away.

Another monster clamped its jaws around Yasa’s leg and tore off the armor plate.

BANG!

Before the monster on top could strike a second time, Yasa fired the large-bore shotgun.

A cup-sized shell casing ejected.

The weapon was absurdly powerful. The monster’s upper body detonated into a rain of blood.

Yasa fired again. The one biting its leg burst apart as well.

When Yasa sat up, the last monster lunged—

and was launched backward by the shot like a baseball struck midair. It slammed into the wall, smeared a black streak of blood, and slid into the corner, dead.

Silence returned.

Five monsters, erased.

Yasa didn’t waste time inspecting. It ran into the room they’d come from.

And there, in a pool of blood, it finally found Grote.

Even though Yasa had prepared itself, the sight stunned it into stillness.

Grote was unrecognizable.

Eyes shut. A chunk of flesh missing from his left cheek, exposing cheekbone and teeth.

And compared to the rest of him, his head was the best preserved part.

His legs were nearly skeletal. His chest and abdomen were a pulped mess. Intestines had been torn out and strewn across the floor…

And yet—

Yasa noticed his heart was still faintly quivering.

It tore an emergency injector from its waist kit and drove it straight into his heart.

Grote’s mouth snapped open. His eyes bulged.

He saw Yasa. He tried to speak—

but only a few wet, rasping exhalations came out.

“Mr. Grote, don’t talk,” Yasa said fast. “I’m going to get you out.”

It said that, but it didn’t know how.

Grote’s condition was too catastrophic. Moving him even slightly might kill him instantly.

Yasa started to rise, searching for anything that could serve as a stretcher—

and Grote grabbed it.

With shaking strength, Grote dragged over a backpack soaked red, pressed the strap into Yasa’s hand, and with what seemed like the last of his life, forced out a few words:

“Go… go… back… take it to… M—Merc…”

He never finished.

His head dropped.

All life left him.

The injector had only extended his heartbeat for a few seconds.

But his dying words sparked a grim reminder.

At this position, Yasa should have been able to reconnect to the Serenity.

The link was still dead.

Was the Serenity still where it had hidden?

Yasa slung the pack and its weapons and sprinted out—

only to freeze.

A massive roar shook the corridor.

Something enormous filled the doorway: a huge, irregular lump of flesh.

Yasa recognized it.

It looked like the monsters it had just blown apart—now mashed together like rotten mud, fused into a single abomination bristling with limbs, eyes, mouths, and swollen boils.

The thing saw Yasa and erupted in rage.

It charged—

but the narrow doorway blocked it.

It didn’t retreat. Like slime, it forced part of its body inside, then kept squeezing in inch by inch.

Yasa fired twice. Two craters blasted into the meat.

The creature shrieked—pain or fury, impossible to tell—and instead of backing off, extruded a clawed tentacle and snatched at Yasa.

Yasa’s shotgun rounds were running low. It chose not to get tangled.

It blasted the tentacle off, then swung the barrel to the wall and fired.

A hole opened in the wall.

Yasa climbed through and sprinted for the docking module while the creature was still jammed in the door.

It had to move. Two minutes remained. The flesh-abomination was still roaring behind, and it wouldn’t take long to tear free.

But now the entire ship was waking up.

Whether it was the thunderous gunfire or the monsters’ howls, sounds began echoing from every direction: from corridors, from vents, from pipes. In seconds, a duct above Yasa burst open and a lizard-like monster dropped down.

It hit the floor and immediately took a shot to the skull.

The roar behind grew closer.

Yasa glanced back.

The corridor behind was already packed with monsters. They still vaguely carried human outlines, but the “human” traits had blurred beyond recognition—some looked insect-like, some fish-like, some were fully scaled, some bore horns, some lacked facial features entirely.

But every eye fixed on Yasa burned blood red.

A few small ones were fast. Even at full sprint, Yasa could feel them gaining.

It ran while firing backward. In tight corridors, the large-bore shotgun was perfect. Several blasts shredded the closest pursuers.

The docking module was only a few dozen meters away now. Yasa could already see the mini-sub parked inside.

It sprinted in and slammed the “execute exit procedure” button.

The inner hatch began to close slowly—while monsters howled and rushed closer.

Yasa switched to the sniper rifle and fired into the leading attackers.

The inner hatch sealed just before they reached it.

In the last instant before the door fully closed, Yasa saw the flesh-abomination again.

It was bigger now—nearly clogging the entire corridor—as if it had been fusing with every monster it killed along the way.

Fifty seconds.

Seawater began flooding the docking module.

Yasa climbed into the mini-sub through the top hatch, fired the engines, and prepared to rocket out the moment the outer door opened.

It didn’t even know if it could clear the self-destruct blast radius in time.

CLANG—CLANG!

Something was battering the inner hatch. Through it, Yasa could hear faint monster roars.

The pounding grew louder, faster.

The hatch began to deform.

Then the top seam tore open into a crack, and a clawed tentacle forced its way in, flailing wildly.

And at the same time—

something worse happened.

A cascade of alarms blared inside the docking module.

The seawater stopped flowing.

On a nearby control screen, a line of text flashed—pure despair:

“SAFETY ALERT! INNER HATCH DAMAGED. EMERGENCY ABORT OF EXIT PROCEDURE!”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (XII)

Forty seconds until detonation…

Yasa was trapped only a door away from open water.

Through the outer hatch’s glass, it stared out in a daze. The escape route was right there—close enough to touch, impossibly far.

The pumps restarted. The water that had just flooded into the docking module began draining again.

The inner hatch was being torn wider and wider. More tentacles and grotesque claws shoved through the widening crack. The monsters were nearly insane now, throwing everything they had at the barrier to get inside and rip Yasa apart.

Yasa checked the large-bore shotgun.

One shell left.

It climbed out of the mini-sub, went to the outer hatch, pressed the barrel directly against the glass at the center—

and fired.

The glass shattered.

A torrent of icy seawater blasted into the docking module and slammed Yasa to the floor.

The hole it punched was huge—wider than a human waist. The water column pouring in was correspondingly thick. The module’s water level rose at a terrifying rate.

Yasa fought the current, got back up, climbed the ladder into the Sea Dragonfly…

and dove inside one second before the seawater covered the mini-sub’s top hatch.

The module filled quickly. Yasa had been waiting for this. The moment internal and external pressure equalized, it swung the mini-sub around and rammed the outer hatch.

The mini-sub was small. The impact wasn’t great.

The outer hatch only shuddered.

Yasa backed off and rammed again.

THUNK—CRACK.

This time, a dull impact rang out and the hatch opened a narrow gap. The latch had loosened.

Yasa’s confidence surged.

One more hit would do it.

It backed off farther, shoved the throttle to the limit, and prepared to slam forward—

when two tentacles whipped in from behind and wrapped the mini-sub like chains.

The propeller screamed at full speed.

The craft didn’t move.

Instead it began to tremble harder and harder, like it was about to shake itself apart.

The tentacles tightened.

Outside, monsters roared.

Water churned. Engines howled. Metal groaned.

Five seconds.

If this were a human, how much courage would it take to stay calm?

Yasa wasn’t human.

It extended the mini-sub’s manipulator arm, clamped down on the stretched tentacles, and cut with all its force.

One tentacle snapped.

The other broke a heartbeat later.

The mini-sub was free.

BOOM—

It shot forward like a torpedo and slammed through the outer hatch, bursting into the cold dark-blue sea.

For that one moment, Yasa had never felt safer. The water around it felt like the factory that had assembled it—enclosing, reliable, protective.

It didn’t even try to orient. It tore forward along the rocky seafloor, driven by one instinct:

get as far from the blast as possible.

The explosion occurred seven or eight seconds after the countdown hit zero. For a moment, Yasa even wondered if Arriet had lied again.

But that delay bought it almost another hundred meters.

The first sign was a deep, muffled boom that came with a vibration—rolling toward it in a wave. Every rock on the seafloor seemed to jump.

Then, after a brief gathering of force, the world broke.

A second roar—so violent it felt like the planet was cracking open.

Yasa felt like it had been yanked out of a still, windless afternoon and dropped into an eighteenth-level hurricane.

The Sea Dragonfly was like a marble on a slingshot string. An invisible force dragged it backward for a distance—

then hurled it forward.

Now it spun like a leaf in a tornado. Yasa slammed into the cabin wall again and again. Sparks flashed inside its mind. For a while it couldn’t see or think. Every warning light on the console lit at once. Continuous impacts and metal deformation rang through the hull.

It wasn’t only the mini-sub being thrown.

Stones were being thrown too—stones larger than the mini-sub itself.

Yasa completely lost control. It could only ride the chaos with the tumbling boulders.

In the end, the Sea Dragonfly couldn’t survive.

A massive rock struck it head-on. The glass cracked and exploded. Seawater rushed in and filled the small cabin instantly.

The deformed hull trapped Yasa. It struggled hard, finally tore itself free—

and the wrecked mini-sub vanished into the murk.

After a while, the current eased a little. Yasa found a shallow depression in the seafloor and wedged itself inside until the rocks stopped rolling.

It worried about Merc. It didn’t dare linger.

When the water finally calmed, Yasa unfolded the webbed fins on its limbs and swam along the seafloor toward Gaben Island.

Without an underwater propulsion rig, Yasa’s speed was similar to a human’s.

But it didn’t tire.

In roughly half an hour, it should be able to climb back onto the Serenity’s deck.

It hadn’t even swum a hundred meters when it saw a thin beam of light sweep past behind it.

The light wasn’t strong, but in the dark, muddy seafloor it was unmistakable.

Yasa ducked behind a boulder.

Seconds later, it saw the beam again—brighter now, like a searchlight swinging through the abyss, sweeping closer.

Yasa shrank deeper into the shadow.

When the beam passed overhead, it spotted the source:

a Plando probe sphere.

The same kind it had shot down earlier.

And it wasn’t alone. Near the blast site, multiple beams were already weaving back and forth.

The explosion had alerted the nearby Plando warship.

The probe searched around Yasa and found nothing.

Yasa started to move—

and then another huge sound thundered from above.

CLANG… gurglegurglegurgle—

Something massive hit the water.

The current churned again.

Not far above Yasa, a shadow hundreds of meters long broke through the surface and descended, trailing a storm of bubbles.

The warship had come down.

The sea became even murkier, but several lights as bright as daylight spread out in a pattern, illuminating a wide region of seafloor.

Yasa adjusted position, hiding in the boulder’s shadow. It didn’t move at all as the steel beast slid past less than ten meters away, heading toward the blast site.

Only when the warship’s lights vanished from view did Yasa sprint-swim toward the Serenity again.

This was a chance.

If luck favored it, before the warship lost interest in the wreckage, Yasa believed it could carry Merc more than a hundred nautical miles away.

At least I save Merc, it thought. Maybe that’s not total failure.

Half an hour later…

Yasa finally surfaced among the dense floes near Gaben Island.

The snow hadn’t stopped. It was heavier than ever. The sky was grayer, darker.

The Serenity was hidden roughly fifty meters behind it.

Before swimming over, Yasa carefully scanned the area to confirm it was safe.

But then its gaze locked on the direction it had come from—

and everything inside it went cold.

In the sky floated dozens of warships of every size: destroyers comparable in size to the Covert, cruisers armored to the last plate…

And within the shadow of the still-dispersing ring-shaped mushroom cloud—judging from the visible section alone—there was a Plando Sotthos-class carrier: the newest model, capable of stealth.

Beyond that, hundreds of aircraft swarmed and circled over the blast site…

Yasa went numb.

This was nothing like its original estimate.

It had expected one or two border patrol escorts.

Instead, it was a carrier battle group.

Why would Plando dispatch a fleet to this remote edge?

To search for the Covert? But the Covert had been missing for years—why now?

Wait.

Now?

A terrifying possibility clicked into place…

Yasa didn’t dare look longer. Using the floes as cover, it swam slowly back toward the Serenity.

As it swam, it kept thinking—how to escape.

It reached the ship before it even realized it.

The terrain felt different now. Then Yasa understood: the Covert’s explosion must have triggered an avalanche.

Heavy snow slid down from Gaben Island’s peak, burying the surrounding fjord and reshaping the coastline.

The Serenity was buried under snow too—so thoroughly Yasa nearly didn’t recognize it.

Yasa dug out the hatch and entered.

In Merc’s cabin, it found its master.

Merc was exactly as when Yasa had left him: asleep, unaware that his father was dead.

Yasa felt a surge of relief.

Then it returned to thinking.

If they could hide here until the Plando fleet left, that would be ideal.

But could they remain hidden?

After assessment, Yasa calculated the chance was under five percent.

This was a fleet—with full reconnaissance assets. If they got even slightly serious, not only the Serenity but even a screw buried under snow couldn’t escape their probes.

And Yasa couldn’t stop analyzing why the fleet was here.

The north was already in full battle. Plando clearly intended to bypass the Antarctic and strike the Tower Clan from the south, completing an encirclement with the northern front.

They were simply drawn here by the Covert’s detonation at the worst possible moment.

That probability was as high as ninety-four percent.

Yasa found a plan.

The survival rate was still low.

But it was necessary.

And it was the only plan left.

Perhaps Merc sensed Yasa… or perhaps he was hungry.

His eyes opened slowly.

Yasa helped him sit up and propped pillows behind his back.

Even though Yasa knew Merc couldn’t understand, it spoke with solemn care anyway:

“Mr. Merc… I’m sorry. I couldn’t bring your father back. Mr. Grote… he… passed away.”

“And… we’re still in danger,” Yasa continued after choosing its words. “A Plando fleet is extremely close. I believe it’s only a matter of time before they find us.”

Merc looked at Yasa with his usual empty eyes.

And yet he seemed to listen.

“My plan is this: before they discover us, I’ll use the radio to call our fleet.”

“If they—no. They’ll come to engage. And it won’t take long. This is not far from North Sende Port.”

“Once the fleets clash, if luck favors us one more time, we may be able to escape in the chaos.”

“And if we can’t…”

“Mr. Merc.”

“And Mr. Grote.”

“Please forgive me. I can’t do better than this.”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (XIII)

Merc listened without visible reaction, but his gaze slowly dropped—to Yasa’s waist, then to the floor.

Yasa followed his eyes and remembered the blood-soaked backpack still on its back.

The pack had been drenched red before. Seawater had washed it, but pale pink drops still dripped steadily onto the deck.

Merc stared at the droplets, blankly, and his body began to tremble—just slightly.

“Uh…” Yasa said softly. “This is what your father asked me to bring you.”

The situation had been too urgent for Yasa to open it earlier. Now it unzipped the backpack and revealed a cylindrical container.

Yasa immediately knew what it was.

It twisted the cap.

Inside were the fluorescent yellow vials.

Sixteen of them.

Each one had a different label.

Grote clearly hadn’t been able to tell which agent did what. His method was simple: take one of each.

“Mr. Merc, this won’t help your condition,” Yasa said carefully. “It’s dangerous. Mr. Grote didn’t know the specifics at the time… I’ll explain later. For now, we’ve to solve the immediate problem.”

Yasa locked the pack in a cabinet, shut Merc’s cabin door, and went up to the deck, watching the sea as it headed for the cockpit.

In the blizzard, visibility was extremely low—perfect cover for a surprise strike.

The large warships clustered together as a single massive shadow, like ancient beasts hiding in clouds.

Meanwhile, the smaller flyers skimming the surface only grew more numerous, prowling and probing.

It wouldn’t be long before Gaben Island fell within their search pattern.

Yasa hurried into the cockpit and opened the radio, attempting to connect to the Ocean Management Bureau.

A problem hit immediately.

No matter how it tried, it couldn’t connect—not to the bureau, not to any outside department.

This sea region seemed blanketed by an invisible barrier.

Was it the Plando fleet?

Very likely.

If Plando intended to flank the Tower Clan from the south, then beyond bad weather as cover, measures like information barriers would be essential.

Yasa stared at the dead signal.

Its only plan had failed.

What now?

It fell into thought again, and its eyes drifted to the mountain peak of Gaben Island—half-hidden in storm clouds.

If it carried the radio over the mountain to the far side… could it escape the barrier?

There was a good chance. Mountains could disrupt shielding fields.

Better to try than to sit here and be found.

But it had to be fast.

Yasa moved immediately.

It detached the radio, slung Merc’s sniper rifle, returned briefly to Merc’s room to say a few words, then went to the stern.

It wrapped the radio in waterproof tarp and placed it inside a box Grote had used for alcohol.

Yasa took an underwater propulsion rig, eased into the water, and began swimming.

To test for signal, the radio remained powered on. To prevent water damage, Yasa didn’t dive. It held the box afloat and used the propulsion rig to steer along the coastline.

Dense floes surrounded Gaben Island, giving Yasa perfect concealment. It increased speed, estimating it could reach the far side in minutes.

But after only a short distance, a new commotion rolled across the sea.

Through a gap between floes, Yasa saw a battered warship breach the water and rise vertically into the sky.

For a heartbeat, its thinking stalled.

Wasn’t that the Covert—the ship that had just self-destructed?

How could it be flying?

Then Yasa saw the answer.

Faint steel cables hung above the wreck.

Up above, the cables were attached to several aircraft, lifting the wreckage in sync.

Plando was salvaging the Covert’s remains.

The wreck rose straight up, shrinking into the snowfall until it vanished.

Plando valued the Covert’s secrets so much that even its wreckage mattered.

After the remains were hauled away, the large warships that had been clustered together began to disperse. Warships and aircraft in the sea also breached the surface one after another.

Everything suggested they were about to begin their next operation.

Yasa panicked. It forgot about stealth and increased speed even more.

After another stretch of swimming—roughly a quarter of the way around the island—hope flashed.

One bar lit on the radio’s signal indicator.

Yasa connected immediately.

After several long seconds, it actually linked—but the signal was weak, the noise thick, and neither side could hear clearly.

“Hello—Ocean… Management… Bureau…”

At last, a voice came through the radio—blurred, broken, but unmistakably the sound Yasa had been waiting for.

Yasa was about to respond—

when it heard a faint bzzzz.

At first it thought it was radio noise.

But the sound grew louder as it approached.

Yasa snapped awake.

It shut the radio off, shoved the box into a narrow gap between floes, covered it with broken ice, and dove under a floe, hiding beneath it.

As expected, a probe sphere rounded the nearby iceberg corner.

It slowed noticeably as it passed.

Maybe it had detected something suspicious. It slowed further, until it hovered.

Yasa didn’t move.

After a few seconds, the probe failed to find the radio or Yasa and drifted away.

Yasa waited until it was far, then surfaced cautiously—

and immediately grew even more tense.

The probe was flying directly toward the fjord where Yasa had come from, and it was flying low. At this rate, all it had to do was turn left in front of the last iceberg and it would enter the fjord and see the Serenity clearly.

Yasa had no choice.

It set up the sniper rifle on a floe and aimed at the probe.

It prayed—just once—that the probe would turn right and leave the fjord.

That it would grant Yasa a little more time.

One minute, even.

Luck didn’t answer.

The probe paused—then turned left.

BANG.

Yasa fired without hesitation. The probe sphere dropped.

Two seconds later, dozens of scan waves of different types swept the area, and Yasa was immediately—directly or indirectly—exposed.

Yasa grabbed the radio box and sprinted onto the shore, slogging through deep snow and running uphill as fast as it could.

In the distance, the fleet moved. Large warships began turning this way. Small aircraft surged toward Gaben Island in a single wave.

Yasa knew its end was sealed.

It ran toward the far side of the mountain—away from the Serenity.

Before it was terminated, it wanted to do one thing:

call in Tower Clan reinforcements for Merc.

It ran while broadcasting into the radio again and again:

“Emergency call to the Ocean Management Bureau, do you copy? This is YASAR-C011. I’ve encountered a large Plando fleet near Gaben Island, close to Antarctica…”

Side Story: Lone Sail on the Vast Sea (XIV) — Finale

Yasa was desperate. It wasn’t until the third attempt that the connection finally reestablished.

“Hello, Ocean Management Bureau. I’m artificial intelligence Lezhe. How may I assist you?”

“I’m Yasa—assistant of the Serenity,” Yasa said rapidly. “I’ve urgent military intelligence to report. Can you transfer me to the Defense Forces?”

“Serenity? Please provide the registration code.”

“HESF-MG48549741.”

“A fishing vessel?”

“Yes.”

“Your current location.”

“Gaben Island.”

“No record of an island by that name.”

“Coordinates: -68.36175, -67.48008.”

“Antarctic waters?”

“Yes.”

“But a maritime ban was issued days ago. Civilian vessels are forbidden to sail.”

“This is urgent. I don’t have time to explain. Connect me to Defense—or at least pass this on: a Plando fleet is about to strike our southern rear. They’re at this coordinate point right now.”

“That doesn’t comply with procedure,” Lezhe replied. “I can’t relay unverified information, especially military intelligence.”

“It’s true!” Yasa nearly shouted. “Use your so-called brain. You’ll get thousands killed!”

“All right,” Lezhe said. “The registered owners of the Serenity are Grote and Merc. Can you ask them to come online?”

“Uh… they… aren’t available right now.”

“Then I’ll escalate through proper channels. You’ll receive a response later.”

“Later? How long?”

“Within thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes? I might not exist in thirty seconds!”

“I’m sorry. We must act according to procedure.”

“To hell with your procedure—!”

Yasa cursed, about to keep arguing—

when the howl of enemy fighters became sharply clear.

It barely had time to turn its head before the first strike arrived.

A dense rain of lasers cut toward it.

Yasa hugged the radio and threw itself aside.

The laser rounds carved deep furrows through snow and ground, blasting up a choking fog of white. Yasa rolled several times and vanished beneath drifted snow.

Then it heard fighters roaring past overhead.

It checked the radio and itself immediately.

Both were intact.

But the communication link had been severed again.

Yasa rose—

and couldn’t see anything. The attack had thrown up so much snow that the whole area was wrapped in swirling white haze.

But fighter engines shrieked from every direction.

The entire island seemed surrounded.

Plando was sealing the island and conducting a full search.

They didn’t seem to be focusing all attention on Yasa yet. They didn’t know how many enemies they might be facing.

But the moment they realized it was only Yasa alone…

there would be no chance left.

Understanding that, Yasa became calmer instead of more frantic.

This time, it didn’t reconnect immediately.

It bowed low, clutching the radio, and kept running uphill.

Half a minute later, it found a hollow on the mountainside and hid inside.

The wind thinned the haze, revealing fighters circling above the island—along with the carrier-led warship group approaching head-on.

Yasa suddenly knew what to do.

It reconnected.

But not to the Ocean Management Bureau.

“Serenity calling the Coast Guard.”

The signal light blinked a few times, then a human male voice came through.

“Hello, Coast Guard.”

“Emergency situation. Request video communication.”

“What emergency?”

“You’ll understand when you see.”

The video linked quickly. Yasa routed the camera feed through its light-eyes and panned across the fighters and the warships nearly blotting out the sky…

“Oh god… what is this?!” the voice gasped. “Are you on the front line?”

“My current coordinates are -68.36175, -67.48008,” Yasa said. “Antarctic waters, an unmarked island. The fleet you’re seeing is preparing to strike our southern rear. Please forward this video to the Defense Forces.”

“Understood. I’ll contact them immediately.”

“Thank you,” Yasa breathed.

“Wait,” the man said. “I don’t even know your name.”

Yasa went silent for a few seconds, then said:

“My name is… Merc.”

“Scout Merc Ovahog. Service ID SPGX186301082.”

…

The moment it finished, the signal cut again—smothered by that invisible barrier.

This time, Yasa didn’t care.

The radio had completed its mission.

It scanned the fighters, then glanced toward the fjord where the Serenity was hidden, wondering how long Tower Clan warships would take to arrive.

Ten minutes?

Fifteen?

Could the Serenity stay hidden that long?

Yasa worried again—

but only seconds later, it was found.

A Nightmare fighter hovered not far away, focusing a beam of harsh light directly onto Yasa.

Yasa dropped to its knees and raised both hands over its head in surrender.

An Exiler flew in, landed nearby, and leveled its rifle at Yasa.

“Who are you? Why are you here?” the Exiler demanded.

“I’m just a civilian robot,” Yasa said. “Discarded here by humans because of a malfunction.”

“Do you’ve companions?”

“No.”

“Then why do you’ve a gun?” the Exiler asked.

Yasa was about to answer—

when something happened that it could never have predicted.

BOOM.

Not far away, two Plando fighters collided in midair.

Both trailed smoke. One smashed into the mountainside. The other plunged into the sea.

What was that?

An accident?

The Exiler clearly didn’t think so.

It assumed Yasa was lying.

It racked its weapon and opened fire.

At this range, Yasa couldn’t avoid taking hits.

It rolled aside, grabbed the sniper rifle, and fired once.

The bullet punched clean through the Exiler’s head.

The hovering Nightmare fighter rotated a missile from its belly—

but before it could launch, Yasa put a precision round through it.

The Nightmare fighter detonated into fragments.

The explosion triggered a small avalanche. Yasa was buried under snow.

Gunfire still raked the area.

Yasa clawed its way out—half of its torso left behind in the drift.

When it finally surfaced from the snow again, it saw a sight that broke it.

The Serenity—that twin-hulled boat—was being lifted into the air, just like the Covert’s wreckage had been.

A bizarre-looking transport craft hung it on cables and raised it into the blizzard sky.

No—

Yasa wanted to scream.

But its voice module was destroyed. No sound came out.

It fired at the transport craft—useless.

It tried to shoot the cables, but the distance was too great. Several shots missed.

All it could do was watch the Serenity grow smaller and smaller.

Hope drifted farther away—

while Exilers searching the area closed in from all sides…

***

Three days later…

Twin Moon Archipelago.

Inside a conference room at the North Sende Southern Defense Forces headquarters, five people sat along one side of a curved table.

Three wore uniforms; judging by their shoulder boards, none were low-ranking. The other two wore formal civilian dress: a kind-faced middle-aged woman, and a bearded man with graying hair.

They represented the highest levels of the Tower Clan’s military and scientific community.

And today, the person they questioned was… unusual.

“Can you guarantee that everything you’ve said is true, and that you’ve held nothing back?” asked the major seated at the far end.

Across from them, a robot sat in a wheelchair. It still had no legs. Bullet impacts scarred its body, and its jaw had only recently been repaired. The technicians had performed only the most basic restoration, but even so, it looked far better than it had three days earlier.

“I guarantee it,” the robot replied.

The major nodded and gestured toward two soldiers standing behind the robot. They saluted, wheeled it out of the room, and left.

After the robot was gone, none of the five stood up.

Instead, they fell into thought.

It was as if the robot’s testimony still hadn’t given them the answer they needed.

“Officers,” the woman said first, “it won’t lie. That’s one of a robot’s basic principles. And we’ve already read its brain logs—they match what it said.”

“I’m not accusing it of lying, Ms. Jordan Ward,” the major replied. “It’s just that… we still don’t have the reason.”

“What was the minimum effective communication distance at the time?” asked the officer in the middle, wearing a colonel’s insignia.

“About ten meters,” the major answered.

“I can shout farther than that,” the colonel snorted.

“I’ve never heard of a battle like this,” said the oldest officer, a lieutenant general, tapping the table with his knuckles, disbelief on his face. “Hundreds of ships on both sides—fighting like it was the age of cold steel.”

“We’ve grown used to fighting under an information network,” someone said.

“Could it be a new Plando information weapon?”

“What idiot would develop a weapon that doesn’t distinguish friend from foe? According to the results, their losses were worse than ours.”

“Has that sea region returned to normal?” the bearded civilian asked suddenly.

“Yes,” the major said. “It’s back to normal now.”

“We need to investigate the information about that seabed warship,” the bearded man said bluntly. “I believe it’s very likely connected to the experiments described.”

“But the ship self-destructed before we arrived.”

“Maybe the self-destruct released some unknown… substance,” Hector said, growing more confident as he spoke. “According to that robot, Plando was researching animal genes under the sea.”

“And bat-dragons were part of it,” Jordan Ward added. “You all know this—those proto-organisms they release still give us headaches.”

“Even so, that can’t cover a region that large.”

“It’s plausible,” the lieutenant general said, nodding. Then he slammed the table, anger flaring. “They’re arrogant beyond belief—running this kind of operation right under our noses.”

“Then how do we investigate now?” the major asked. “They dragged the wreckage away.”

“Didn’t the robot say it brought out more than a dozen vials of agent?” the lieutenant general asked.

“On the Serenity,” the major said. “And it was taken away too.”

Silence fell again…

***

Later that day.

Hector pushed open the repair room door alone. He dragged in a chair, placed it beside Yasa’s wheelchair, sat down close, and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it and smoked as if this were his own office.

Yasa glanced at him—then drifted back into the same blank stare as before.

“What are you thinking about?” Hector asked.

Yasa said nothing…

“Still guilty about not saving your owner?”

…

“It’s not your fault. No one could have saved someone in that situation.”

…

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

…

“Where did your sniper skill come from? That’s not something you should have.”

“I’ve already told you,” Yasa said.

“Your owner’s notes?”

“Yes.”

“You’re very…” Hector studied it. “Unusual.”

…

“Do you know how many Exilers you sniped that day, before we arrived?”

“I didn’t count.”

“Seventy-six,” Hector said. “Losing communications crippled their efficiency, but that’s still an astonishing number.”

…

“Do you know what that makes you?” Hector said. “A hero. You saved every southern city. For days, the streets of North Sende Port have been talking about you.”

Yasa stayed silent, eyes lowered to where its legs should have been.

“Don’t worry,” Hector said. “Tomorrow they’ll take you back to the factory for repairs—best technicians.”

…

“Do you’ve any other requests?”

…

“All right. Good night.”

Hector got no response. He stood and walked to the door.

Just as he pulled it open, Yasa finally spoke.

“Can I enlist?”

“You want to be a… avenger?” Hector blinked, slow to process.

“No,” Yasa said. “I want to be a soldier like a human. To be promoted. To have some thoughts of my own. Some freedom. Some…”

“Interesting.” Hector was suddenly more intrigued. He returned and sat down again.

“Why do you want to enlist?”

“So I’ll face Plando directly,” Yasa said. “Maybe one day I can reach their homeland. Maybe one day I’ll learn what happened to the Serenity. Maybe I’ll still have a chance…”

Yasa didn’t finish, but Hector understood.

“The war is getting worse every day,” Hector said. “You might be terminated soon.”

“I don’t care,” Yasa said, turning toward him. “Is it possible, Mr. Hector?”

“There’s no precedent, but…” Hector smiled. “Bring it up tomorrow. I’ll help you argue for it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hector.”

“You’re welcome. So—what name do you plan to use when you start your military career?”

“I’ve a name. Yasa.”

“Heh.” Hector laughed. “That’s not a name. That’s a robot model. It sounds as ridiculous as naming yourself ‘Microwave.’”

“Then what should I be called?”

“Isn’t there a ready-made name already on the roster? Saves you a pile of paperwork,” Hector said, laughing harder. “And you can even get promoted right now—hahaha…”

Volume Four: The Dark Era